BRIDGET WALSH'S PAGE: The Variety Palace Mysteries series 1, 2 & 3

THE TUMBLING GIRL (Variety Palace Mysteries #1)
BRIDGET WALSH
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The first in a sharp, witty series of Victorian mystery novels, The Tumbling Girl sees an unlikely duo team up to solve a grisly spate of murders.

1876, Victorian London. Minnie Ward, the feisty scriptwriter for the Variety Palace Music Hall, is devastated when her best friend is found brutally murdered. She enlists the help of private detective Albert Easterbrook, who already has his hands full trying to catch the notorious Hairpin Killer. But Minnie can't help getting involved in the investigation, and as the bodies begin to pile up, Albert's burgeoning feelings for his amateur partner start to interfere...

A dazzling debut for fans of Sarah Waters and Elizabeth Macneal, and shows like Miss Scarlet and the Duke.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: What delight it is to find a dynamic duo, opposite genders and complementary skill sets uniting to solve a case not worth the police's time...the victim was "just" a performer and a female one at that...without slobbering over each other's sex appeal! Albert comes to realize what a treasure Minnie is without her body being his focus.

Minnie's clearly an unusual person, one who does not accept Authority's word as law. It makes her very much in step with my tastes in a person to read about. Albert is built up as a detective of skill and reputation, which made me a little disgruntled at some missteps he made that were Very Convenient for the plot...I didn't want to leave off that fractional fifth star, but for a while it looked like I'd be rating this story just under four stars.

What put the rest of the fourth star back on my opinion of the story was Albert and Minnie's response, a shared one, to the Hairpin Killer as a person. The killer has a deeply twisted motive for doing the revolting things done to the victims, and it offends Albert as much as it does Minnie because he sees the victims as real people in the way she does. He, the experienced detective, wants to catch the killer because he is mortally offended that these crimes *occur* to the killer, that it seems *okay* to do these things in a person's mind. Minnie, OTOH, is outraged that there's so little official interest in the killings because the victims are lower class.

All of that is sort of elliptical because it would be very easy to ruin the puzzle if I say more explicitly what the duo are responding to. It's not a cozy, y'all, and the crimes are not sugar-coated. I don't think, for my read anyway, that it's prurient in purpose to be as direct about what the results of murder are. It felt to me that the detective duo's different tonal responses to the realities of the aftermath were intended to make their partnership more nuanced, more relatable for future events in this story and later ones.

Of course I already knew there were more books in the series before starting this read, but that honestly made the ending bearable. The twist, if I'd had to endure a long wait for book two to come out, would've been excruciating! It was not an artificial, tacked-on, manipulative one; it was organic and it was kind of dreadful, but it worked. I'll warn you, gentle readers, to have book two to hand when you read book one.

I encourage you to read it. There is a lot to enjoy in a female-led Victorian detective duo solving nasty crimes by bringing justice to the perpetrator in spite of official indifference. Victims, in any afterlife that might exist, can feel their wrongs have been redressed.

On to book two!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE INNOCENTS (Variety Palace Mysteries #2)
BRIDGET WALSH
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The hotly anticipated follow-up to The Tumbling Girl, The Innocents follows Minnie and Albert on a new crime-solving quest in the world of a Victorian music hall.

Still reeling from the gruesome murders of the previous year, Minnie Ward is appointed manager of the Variety Palace. Times are hard, with performers shunning the 'cursed' music hall, and Minnie's relationship with Detective Albert Easterbrook is more complicated than ever. Despite the success of their last case, Minnie is terrified of the feelings that have started to grow between them. She has decided it’s definitely better for all involved if they stay as far away from each other as possible…

But when another killer begins to terrorise the city's streets, Minnie and Albert are thrown together once more. The crimes seem connected to a notorious tragedy that left nearly 200 children dead—and with so many lives affected by the incident, practically everyone is a suspect. As the investigation unfolds, dark truths begin to come to light, and Minnie is forced to confront her own past.

The Innocents is the 2nd book in the Variety Palace Mystery series, which can be read independently but continue the story of irresistible crime-solving duo Minnie and Albert. Taking place against the thrilling backdrop of the Variety Palace Music Hall in gritty Victorian London, it's perfect for fans of historical crime fiction, such as books by Sarah Waters, Stacey Halls and Elizabeth Macneal.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'll start by noting that you really will enjoy this read a lot more if you read book one before picking this one up. (I'm soft-pedaling this because publishers are really anxious for y'all who resist series-reading unless the series is complete need you to buy the books.)

I'd say this was not *quite* up to the first one's standard of narrative refinement. The twist I mentioned that occurs in the last 15% of The Tumbling Girl is, to my surprise, allowed to keep affecting the action in this book. I felt that was surprising, not ordinary; I didn't mind it because the issue under investigation by Minnie and Albert is not an ordinary one, relating to and stemming from a decade-plus old cause. If we're seeing life unfolding as Life unfolds for us real people, let the recrudescence of complicating factors do the same. After all, ma'at is never done with us; why should plots be artificially tidy?

Because fiction isn't life, that's why.

Minnie is in a more complicated situation vis-à-vis the music hall in this entry, is still processing her complicated feelings for Albert, still juggling skatey-eight skabillion demands on her time...and still can not let an injustice, really a dereliction, with horrible real-world pain and anguish as its fruit go unaddressed once Albert makes her aware of it.

Albert's still the emotionally labile one of the pair. He loves Minnie and still doesn't demand anything of her just is there with her, supportive, while still giving her the impetus to use skills and talents she might be reticent to deploy as he guides her to do. She suffers the conflicted feelings that any PTSD sufferer would when confronted by a worthy, good partner: she isn't good enough, he deserves better, he is too good for her. Albert does not agree. Albert demonstrates this with patient kindness and sincere reassurance. It's like watching Ilya from Heated Rivalry tenderly reassuring Shane that everything's fine when stress causes a spin-out. Albert has earned Minnie's trust so he can focus her on protecting their friends from harm.

These stories are not sugar-coated. The terrible things that happen are not shied away from, minimized, in order to spare your 21st-century squeamishness. I'm okay with that, but in this story two things occur and get described that are...viscerally upsetting, child harm and cruelty to dogs. Both are condemned, both are presented as appalling to Albert, Minnie, and decent people everywhere. They're still in the story and not merely in passing.

I do not recommend this entry in the series to my sensitive pals. I had a hard time with the dog scene. I think y'all might as well skip this story who can't deal even with what I've told you.

Thicker-skinned folk will likely find the resolution to the multistranded miscreancy in this story worth powering past, or through, those dreadful byways. Minnie and Albert have annoying habits of not learning lessons from their pasts, but the author's set the books a couple years apart so that was enough of a fig-leaf for the issue in my reading experience.

It was a rather deus ex machina of an ending, though. Sort of late-career Agatha Christie vibes. It wasn't totally, utterly sprung on me but it was abrupt and not quite the very best work from Author Walsh. I'm still at four stars because Albert and the Variety Palace scoobygroup keep Minnie held together and moving forward in believable, investable ways.

Maybe you'll get as much from these two reads as I did by experiencing them back-to-back. I recommend it to the not-squeamish.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE SPIRIT GUIDE (Variety Palace Mysteries #3)
BRIDGET WALSH
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery on 7 July 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A witty, propulsive historical murder mystery investigating a secretive spiritualist cult in Victorian London—and the 3rd installment in the beloved Variety Palace Mysteries series!

1879, Victorian London.

Tea room sting operations, seedy music hall secrets, elaborate disguises, and slow-burn romance…

Detective duo Minnie Ward and Albert Easterbrook return for another exciting case to uncover the dark secrets at the heart of Victorian London’s spiritualist scene.

This time, an investigation into two mysterious deaths leads this famed detective duo to the doors of the Spirit Sisterhood, a female-only spiritualist group that facilitates communion with the souls of the dead. And recently several of its visitors have been found dead themselves.

Minnie isn't buying it: there is more to the Sisterhood than there first seems. The more Minnie looks, the more covert operations come to light. She goes undercover at the organization’s secretive countryside home, where she quickly finds herself drawn into the dark but strangely alluring world of spirits and ghosts.

But, isolated from Albert and everyone she loves, Minnie's situation quickly gets out of hand. Can she find a way out of this remote cult before time runs out? And can she keep her own demons at bay long enough to withstand the Sisterhood?

A rip-roaring murder mystery brimming with theatrical detail, loveable characters, and an addictive plot, the 3rd book in the beloved Variety Fair Mysteries will keep you guessing until the very last page.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Albert's more assertive in this book, more worried about Minnie's immediate physical safety, and so more motivated to behave in a protective way. It's not unreasonable. Minnie is separated from him in the remote place that the target of their criminal investigation, the Spirit Sisterhood, has sequestered themselves away from prying eyes (like Minnie's since Albert can't come, or even visit).

Weird things begin to occur; Minnie, as a theatre person, can't *quite* dismiss them all as illusions. That is the most unsettling aspect of her stay with the Spirit Sisterhood. She is not taken in, of course, by the cruder illusions, but she is deeply troubled by the weird...immanence...of violence. There have been two murders already, and without the safety of her ever-attentive Albert, can Minnie navigate the eerie and threatening world of the Spirit Sisterhood?

Of course she can; of course the redoubtable Albert is there when he is really needed. It's the way the series works. And it's the series getting a shake-up with the spooky trappings of the Sisterhood that makes this entry a hit with me. Developments occur in a balloon. Speeches are made, laconic people wax eloquent, the rotten-souled abuser who's preying on young women is thwarted...though we're not privy to the inner workings of a louse's soul like we are with the Epstein Files, we're similarly positioned to watch the fall.

Less physically violent action marked a pleasant change to my mind. I like Albert, and really want him to end up with Minnie in all her prickly glory. I'm really pleased at how his character develops in this story. Minnie needs every second of the peril in this story to do hard, necessary emotional work; her relationship with Albert can't grow if she refuses to.

I very much approve of this outing. I hope the dynamic duo will be back to enliven the music-hall stage (foreshadowing, that) while making London safer for the ordinary working souls.