Devoured by D.E. Meredith

I am in two minds about this book, on the one hand it is a nicely convoluted murder mystery on the other it travels the well marked path of vice-ridden aristocratic villains aided by corrupt coppers of which we have had more than sufficient of late.
The central characters are Professor Hatton and his morgue assistant Roumonde, pioneers of the new science of forensics.   They are called by Inspector Adams of Scotland Yard to the scene of the murder of Lady Bessingham, a society hostess who is also prominent as a patron of expeditions to discover new plant species.   Lady Bessingham is also no stranger to controversy where the new discoveries of science clash with the doctrines of established religion.   The crime appears to lack a motive until one of the young scientists, a naturalist, that she has sponsored reveals that a parcel of letters that he had sent to her is missing.   These letters detail the conversations that he had with another naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace revealing his revolutionary theories on evolution.   Lady Bessingham would have been prepared to publish these theories regardless of the public outcry that they would have caused.   Would preventing this publication give someone sufficient motive to commit murder?   Roumonde clashes with Inspector Adams over the investigation, or lack of one, of a young girl whose body has been brought in to the morgue having been found murdered in an East End alley.   This is where the aristocratic villains and corrupt coppers come in.   Adams, like most Scotland Yard detectives of the time moonlights as a private investigator.
Despite my moan about aristocratic villains (where there no middle or working class villains in Victorian London?) I enjoyed this book.   Mrs Meredith has constructed her plot well concealing one of her muderers effectively until the final chapters and including the requisite number of red herrings.   In addition she writes well and has done her research into the period which kept me turning the pages and, as one who reads solely for pleasure, that is all that one can ask.