THE POISONER'S RING

A time traveler solves a string of grisly murders.

While in Edinburgh attending her dying grandmother, Canadian police detective Mallory Mitchell found herself inexplicably inserted into the body of a Victorian housemaid. Fortunately, the Gray family, whom she now serves, is just unconventional enough to accept her account of the transposition at face value, even to the point of calling her by her modern-day name rather than Catriona, the name of the now-missing maid. In return for their generosity, Mallory agrees to help youngest child Duncan Gray in his criminal investigations, which he undertakes alongside his day job as a mortician. Their latest challenge is to track down a purported ring of homicidal wives who do away with their unwanted spouses through an untraceable toxin that Mallory recognizes as thallium, which is so little known in 1860s Scotland that even Duncan’s chemist sister, Isla, is unaware of it. Their search for the killers becomes all the more urgent when Duncan’s oldest sister, Annis, is suspected of poisoning her own husband, the philandering Lord Leslie. Armstrong embellishes her already elaborate mise-en-scène with enough steampunk trappings—dimly lit bars, knife fights, and secret laboratories chock full of poisons—to satisfy die-hard fans of Victoriana. But the real interest lies in observing the offbeat Gray family and seeing how the involuntary time traveler integrates into their equally loopy world.

Highly niche but effective.