Charles Finch Books In Order

A Beautiful Blue Death

On any given day in London, all Charles Lenox, Victorian gentleman and armchair explorer, wants to do is relax in his private study with a cup of tea, a roaring fire and a good book. But when his lifelong friend Lady Jane asks for his help, Lenox cannot resist another chance to unravel a mystery, even if it means trudging through the snow to her townhouse next door.
One of Jane’s former servants, Prudence Smith, is dead an apparent suicide. But Lenox suspects something far more sinister: murder, by a rare and deadly poison. The house where the girl worked is full of suspects, and though Prudence dabbled with the hearts of more than a few men, Lenox is baffled by an elusive lack of motive in the girl s death. When another body turns up during the London season s most fashionable ball, Lenox must untangle a web of loyalties and animosities. Was it jealousy that killed Prudence? Or was it something else entirely, something that Lenox alone can uncover before the killer strikes again disturbingly close to home?

The September Society

The sitting room looked as familiar as the back of his hand, and immediately Lenox took a liking to the young man who inhabited it. He saw several small artifacts of the missing student’s life a frayed piece of string about two feet long of the sort you might bind a package with, half of a pulpy fried tomato, which was too far from the breakfast table to have been dropped, a fountain pen, and lastly, a card which said on the front The September Society…
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In the small hours of the morning one fall day in 1866, a frantic widow visits detective Charles Lenox. Lady Annabelle s problem is simple: her beloved son, George, has vanished from his room at Oxford. When Lenox visits his alma mater to investigate, he discovers a series of bizarre clues, including a murdered cat and a card cryptically referring to The September Society.

Then, just as Lenox realizes that the case may be deeper than it appears, a student dies, the victim of foul play.

What could The September Society have to do with it? What specter, returned from the past, is haunting gentle Oxford? Lenox, with the support of his devoted friends in London s upper crust, must race to discover the truth before it comes searching for him, and dangerously close to home.

The Fleet Street Murders

The third book in the Charles Lenox series finds the gentleman detective trying to balance a heated race for Parliament with the investigation of the mysterious simultaneous deaths of two veteran reporters. It’s Christmas, 1866, and amateur sleuth Charles Lenox, recently engaged to his best friend, Lady Jane Grey, is happily celebrating the holiday in his Mayfair townhouse. Across London, however, two journalists have just met with violent deaths one shot, one throttled. Lenox soon involves himself in the strange case, which proves only more complicated as he digs deeper. However, he must leave it behind to go north to Stirrington, where he is fulfilling a lifelong dream: running for a Parliamentary seat. Once there, he gets a further shock when Lady Jane sends him a letter whose contents might threaten their nuptials. In London, the police apprehend two unlikely and unrelated murder suspects. From the start, Lenox has his doubts; the crimes, he is sure, are tied, but how? Racing back and forth between London and Stirrington, Lenox must negotiate the complexities of crime and politics, not to mention his imperiled engagement. As the case mounts, Lenox learns that the person behind the murders might be closer to him and his beloved than he knows.

A Stranger in Mayfair

Returning from a continental honeymoon with his lifelong friend and new wife, Lady Jane Grey, Charles Lenox is asked by a colleague in Parliament to consult in the murder of a footman, bludgeoned to death with a brick. His investigation uncovers both unsettling facts about the family he served and a strange, second identity that the footman himself cultivated. Going into the boxing clubs and public houses, the Mayfair mansions and servants quarter of Victorian London, Lenox gradually realizes that an old friend may be implicated in the footman’s death. Soon a suspect is arrested, but Lenox has his doubts. Desperately trying to balance the opening of Parliament and what he feels sure is a dark secret, he soon discovers that the killer is someone shockingly innocuous who may be prepared to spill blood again, even a detective s. In Detective Lenox, Lady Grey, and their circle of close associates, Charles Finch has created a cast of inviting, flesh andblood characters. His evolving series, with its keen eye for period detail and razor sharp plotting, offers readers an unparalleled brand of charm, sophistication, and suspense.

The Woman in the Water

Audio CD, Tantor and Blackstone Publishing