A charity shop find, which is destined to return there. The historic detail is solid (Jackson's background is as a historian), but what the novel gained in this respect it lost in terms of style — in a major way — and plot — to a certain extent. Notwithstanding my bias towards/hope for more information about the Underground — where surprisingly little of the narrative occurred — what let A Metropolitan Murder down was the highly stilted style, unnecessary section breaks titled “Morning”, “Later” and so on. The editor must have done a poor job since there was a reasonable amount of repetition too. The plot relied quite heavily on coincidence and mistaken identity. These may be natural tropes to which to turn, but they came across as somewhat heavy-handed. Not an actively bad book, but I've read much better. 6/10.
By Lee Jackson