MURDER ON AMSTERDAM AVENUE is book seventeen in Victoria Thompson's Gaslight Mystery series. With delightful historical mysteries, this series is set in nineteenth century New York City. Like Charlotte and Thomas Pitt of Anne Perry's famed series, midwife Sarah Brandt and Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy come from different ethnic and social classes, allowing Thompson to draw back the curtain on how many different types of people lived in yesteryear. I enjoy this series as much for the detail about turn of the century New York as I do the mysteries.

Sarah Brandt is the daughter of NYC high society parents, who turned her back on her elite upbringing to marry a common physician. Now widowed, Sarah is a midwife and the adoptive mother of a little girl who also assists her fiancé Frank Malloy in crime investigations. Malloy recently inherited an enormous fortune and so has been turned off the metropolitan police force. He is at odds and ends trying to supervise the completion of the reconstruction of a mansion so he and Sarah may live there once they marry. Waiting for the house to be done is the final impediment to their marriage, and I have to say, I expected that it would not be completed in this book. I take great glee in watching the construction work stymie Malloy in a way that detective work does not!

Sarah's mother takes Sarah on a condolence call to the Upper West Side, where Charles Fairfax, the son of family friends has just unexpectedly died. Charles' father asks Sarah and Malloy to investigate, as he believes his son has been poisoned. The further into the investigation our intrepid couple gets, the more family secrets trickle out to confound the sleuths. The origins of the murder reach back to the War Between the States, and the scandal could take the prominent family down. As always, there are wonderful insights into the social mores of the time, with delightful nuggets of historical details strewn easily and fruitfully throughout the story. I always enjoy the strength and compassion of both Sarah and Malloy, whose loves continues to enrich their lives and those around them.

One of the most pleasing things about Murder on Amsterdam Avenue is that Sarah and Malloy finally get married. After such a looooooonng engagement over books and books and yet more books, I was beginning to think their marriage would never take place! But take heart, their marriage does not spell the end of the series- book eighteen has already been announced! I am eager to pick up the next in the Gaslight Mystery series, as Thompson's books never disappoint.