The Body at Waterloo Station by Emily Organ:

4 stars

Four friends—Inspector James Blakely and his wife, Mrs. Penny Blakely; Harry, a journalist; and Emma Langley, a piano teacher and Mrs. Blakely’s investigative partner—are all professionally intrigued when a body is found stashed in a trunk at Waterloo Station. It is the match that sets London on fire. The body belongs to Andrew Peverell, an inquisitive clerk in the dead letter office, who was investigating a string of mysterious letters that never got to their intended recipient and held royal implications. When a second body is found, the four are determined to find the truth before it claims any more lives.

The Body at Waterloo Station feels a bit like an expansion of Agatha Christie’s The Adventure of the Clapham Cook, while still being its own tale. The prose is a bit minimalist—I don’t know what any of the characters look like, aside from a general description of Gilbertson—but it didn’t particularly bother me.

I’m entering the series in the middle, unfamiliar with Emily Organ or her other works, and while the story doesn’t invite you in and quickly get you familiarized as some middle-series books do, I did not feel that I was lacking essential information. The relationships between the four are quickly determined, with their professions allowing new readers to differentiate the characters.

I did feel that Penny and Emma volunteering to assist at the dead letter office—thrusting themselves into a Scotland Yard murder inquiry—was a bit of a stretch, particularly when Emma absconded with evidence, showed it to Harry, and then she and Penny gave it away. It’s rather an unprofessional series of events—although the rules of detection were not, perhaps, so hard and fast as they are now.

Accepting all that as part of the dynamic, however, it is an engaging tale, quite solvable for the reader, and well-paced. There was something clean about how it unfolded, with clues being uncovered at the ideal moment. The solution was quite satisfying; however, the final letter that was found… Yes, it provided more evidence, but it almost seemed to confirm that the murder victim wasn’t as nice as he had originally appeared. Fine; perhaps he wasn’t, but it seems a bit hard when the poor guy isn’t alive to defend himself. On the other hand, the perpetrator was uniformly and unrepentantly evil, so perhaps that balances the scales.

The Body at Waterloo Station is a fun, easy read with warmth, charm, a twist, and just grisly enough. It’s not a heavy mystery, but still slightly shocking in parts—perfect as an inky travel companion or a rainy day read.

Thank you, Storm Publishing, for the opportunity to read The Body at Waterloo Station. I received a complimentary copy, and I am writing this review voluntarily.