'The Fourteenth Letter' by Claire Evans

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 A murdered bride.
A cryptic message.
A dangerous secret.

 One balmy June evening in 1881, Phoebe Stanbury stands before the guests at her engagement party: this is her moment, when she will join the renowned Raycraft family.

 As she takes her fiance's hand, a stranger with a knife steps forward and ends the poor girl's life. Amid the chaos, he turns to her groom and mouths: 'I promised I would save you'.

 Curl up for a sumptuous, exhilarating debut as a young legal clerk seeks to solve the mystery of Phoebe's death - and uncovers a secret world full of danger.

 'A sumptuous, exhilarating debut' is the best way to describe this novel, recommended for fans of Kate Mosse and Jessie Burton. Claire Evans may be new to writing - she only left her career at the BBC in 2013 and combines her writing career with her job as Chief Operating Officer at Two Brothers Pictures - but she knows what she is doing. There is no doubt that her experience advising on Doctor Foster and The Honourable Woman left her with a taste for thrillers. The Fourteenth Letter contains a cast of characters who are delightfully mysterious and sinister. It is moreover well-plotted, with a narrative rife with unpredictability building up to a gasp-inducing conclusion, and well-researched, displaying the author's interest in the culture of Victorian London.

As I have not had much time to read for pleasure during my past three years at university, it took me a while to get back into reading steadily for hours on end. Yet, I whizzed through this book, following the twisting, turning plot like a kid with a treasure map. This novel romps along at a brisk pace, full of daring adventure and courage in the face of evil adversity, as shown particularly in the characters of Savannah Shelton and William Lamb, the mixed-race illegal immigrant and the timid young legal clerk drawn into this secretive and surprising quest.

All in all, this is an exciting book, perfect to read either while sunbathing in the current heatwave or while commuting or for winding down to at the end of a long day.

I am now reading 'Jamaica Inn' by Daphne Du Maurier, and will post a review once I have finished reading it.

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