Death Descends on Saturn Villa

Death Descends on Saturn Villa by M.R.C. Kasasian
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This was an unexpected find, not least because it’s set in my own genre and era. It’s 1883 and when London’s foremost personal detective Sidney Grice is called away to Yorkshire on a case, his goddaughter and ward Miss March Middleton decides to become London’s first foremost personal lady detective with disastrous results to herself.
Like many a Wilkie Collins, the first-person narrative is shared between characters, and, just like Wilkie Collins, Kasasian doesn’t mind injecting a lot of humour. The style, which is like no other I’ve ever read, careers between absurdist comedy and high Gothic. Although they both work, I’m not sure they always sit well together and the change can be a little unsettling, especially when it comes mid-narrative. And yet the story is always grounded in first-class research.
The characters are wonderful, right down to the slovenly maid, Molly (even if in real life “nobody would not never speak this way, never not”). Your heart soars when she’s allowed to become something more than a comic cypher.
As for the mystery element, there are some truly puzzling accounts of the book’s various victims apparently putting themselves to death, with equally ingenious, intricately set-up solutions—which again seem to be based on scrupulous research (Uncle Tolly’s bedroom; Mrs Prendergast’s corsets).
Since this is the first time I’ve delved into this series, I have no idea whether the author routinely ends his books with a character reflecting on the events some sixty years later (1943), or whether this was unique to this one, but here he poignantly juxtaposes his novel’s subject matter and themes with the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews.
I am looking forward to reading more.
But that’s just my own humble opinion…what do you think? Do let me know!

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