Think Sherlock investigating the supernatural and you’ve got The Curious Affair of the Somnambulist and the Psychic Thief.
The Somnambulist
For several years Miss Lane was companion, collaborator and friend to the lady known to the Psychical Society only as Miss X – until she discovered that Miss X was actually a fraud.
Now Miss Lane works with Mr Jasper Jesperson as a consulting detective, but the cases are not as plentiful as they might be and money is getting tight – until a wife’s concern for her husband’s nocturnal ramblings piques their interest, and mediums begin to disappear all over London.
There is only one team with the imagination and intelligence to uncover the nefarious purpose behind the vanished psychics and the somnambulist’s wanderings.
Jesperson and Lane: at your service.
What on earth is a somnambulist?
That was my first thought on picking up the book. My research revealed it is a sleepwalker, that Tuttle’s first book was co-written with George R R Martin and that The Somnambulist (it’s full title is actually The Curious Affair of the Somnambulist and the Psychic Thief but to type that more than once is ridiculous) is the first in a series of crime fighting, supernatural spiced books. My interest piqued I read on. The book had the immediate feel of Conan Doyle. A fact acknowledged in the book when Lane very early on declares herself ‘no John Watson’. I immediately took to Jesperson, his mother and Lane and can see a series definitely working. Does a future romance lurk?
The story itself unwinds and at some point you just have to go with the fact there seem to be not one, not two but several mediums circulating around London. It reaches a typical climatic ending before leaving the door well and truly open for a sequel. There is one – The Curious Affair of the Witch at Wayside Cross, (why the long names I don’t know). If it lands on my doorstep I will give it a read but I won’t be rushing to find it. It was enjoyable but didn’t get under my skin as all truly good book should.
