In The Limehouse Text, Barker and Llewelyn discover a pawn ticket among the effects of Barker's late assistant, leading them to London's Chinese district, Limehouse. There they retrieve an innocent-looking book that proves to be a rare and secret text stolen from a Nanking monastery, containing lethal martial arts techniques forbidden to the West. With the political situation between the British Empire and Imperial China already unstable, the duo must not only track down a killer intent upon gaining the secret knowledge but also safeguard the text from a snarl of suspects with conflicting interests.
Prowling through an underworld of opium dens, back-room blood sports, and sailors' penny hangs while avoiding the wrath of the district's powerful warlord, Mr. K'ing, Barker and Llewelyn take readers on a perilous tour through the mean streets of turn-of-the-century London.

My Review:

I was feeling in a bit of a murder-y mood this week – reading-wise at least. Which seems entirely fitting as we’re ‘killing’ 2023 this weekend and ringing in 2024. Even the first book this week, Paladin’s Faith, fits that murder theme, because the story is wrapped around preventing the protagonist from getting murdered, AND because one of the characters in the story is from a people who call the individual years gods, gods who die at the end of the year as the new year-god is born.

And this series, Barker & Llewelyn is also part of my anticipation for the coming year, as this series has turned into my new comfort read series, just as yesterday’s book was the penultimate story in a series that has formed part of my comfort reading for THIS year coming to an end.

Barker & Llewelyn certainly have become a comfort read, as was evidenced by the way I slipped back into their Victorian London like slipping into a warm bath, and didn’t resurface until my mind had its fill of the mystery and was ready to come back to the real world.

Not that the real, 21st century doesn’t intrude in this series, because it frequently does. Not through ANY anachronisms, but rather as a result of the fact that technology may change but human nature does not. The issues that face Barker & Llewelyn, issues of race, gender, class and socioeconomic inequalities, the tensions between countries and war and peace, have always been part of the human condition.

The author does an excellent job of allowing the reader to experience the roots of specific 21st century issues in 19th century mores, behaviors and actions without ever breaking the character of the era in which this series takes place.

This entry in the series, as looks to be a developing pattern for the stories as a whole, begins at a climactic moment very near the end that seems both shocking and inexplicable as an opening – but fully rivets the reader’s attention and doesn’t let go until the story has caught up to that climax.

Rather like a caper story, which often begins by seeing the results of what got done and then winds its action back to the beginning of how the characters got to that point. After all, there kind of is a caper in The Limehouse Text. Multiple capers, in fact, although that’s not clear to anyone involved when Llewelyn winds his narrative back to begin at the beginning.

Which turns out to be tied up in Thomas Llewelyn’s own beginning as Private Enquiry Agent Cyrus Barker’s assistant. The job Llewelyn has been growing into and abler for every day was only available to him because the previous occupant had become involved in considerably more danger than even his employer had been aware of. Danger that resulted in his murder – a case that Barker has not managed to solve even a year later.

But new evidence in Quong’s murder has been uncovered by a police inspector who turns out to have been a bit too thorough for his own good. Resulting in the reopening of that old case, a new string of deaths and the potential for grave diplomatic incidents in the already fractious relationship between Britain and China – whether those incidents take place in Limehouse, in Peking, or over Cyrus Barker’s grave.

Escape Rating A+: One thing drove me utterly bananas during my reading of The Limehouse Text. I had the vague impression, not that I’d read this before, but that the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series had also tackled a story set in Limehouse – London’s Victorian version of Chinatown – but couldn’t track down precisely which story. I think it may have been “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, but I wasn’t able to nail it down without watching the thing. (Which would have been a treat but not necessarily at 3 in the morning.)

And that was absolutely the only quibble I had with the whole fascinating story, which made The Limehouse Text an excellent book to close out the year!

I got into the Barker & Llewelyn series because of their resemblance to Holmes and Watson, but I’ve stayed, and plan on continuing, because of the ways in which they take that familiar setting and put an entirely different spin on it in the very best way.

A big part of that spin is that Holmes and Watson were, in their own ways, both insiders in a society that rigorously imposed boundaries on all sides. Barker, as a self-educated Scotsman who grew up in China, and Llewelyn, as a Welshman who served a prison sentence, are outsiders and frequently and bitingly reminded of it by the powers-that-think-they-be.

This condition is played with, up, out and over in this entry in the series, as it showcases the contempt with which the British government and its representatives, as well as more of the general public than we’d like to admit, treated both the Chinese immigrants who had settled in London AND the whole entire government of Imperial China which the British continued to rape and pillage on any and all pretexts.

(R.F. Kuang’s Babel also draws on these same historical conditions – but takes them in a rather different direction.)

While all of that is background, it is also an integral part of the mystery, as the item that Quong died for is a sacred text that should never have been smuggled out of China. It does not have the military applications that either the Chinese or the British believe that it might, and it absolutely does belong back where it was stolen from. The conflict within the story is between those who want to profit from it, those who want to use it for its purported military applications, and those who want to see it returned to its rightful place.

With Barker caught in the middle and punched from all sides. Literally.

In the end, this is a clever, convoluted mystery, solved but not truly resolved by fascinating characters, steeped in a culture and a perspective that was not treated with any kind of respect in its time and about which stereotypes promoted during this period still linger. The reader is inexorably drawn in by the mystery and the setting, and left with both the satisfaction of at least some just desserts being served – as a mystery should – while still reeling from the marvelously presented microcosm of all the reasons why ‘colonialism’ is such a disgustingly dirty word in so many places around the globe to this very day.

For all these reasons, and the reasons outlined in my reviews of the first two books in this marvelous series, Some Danger Involved and To Kingdom Come, I will absolutely be back for more of Barker & Llewelyn’s fascinating cases in 2024. Next up, The Hellfire Conspiracy, the next time I need a comfortingly murderous read!

An atmospheric debut novel set on the gritty streets of Victorian London, Some Danger Involved introduces detective Cyrus Barker and his apprentice, Thomas Llewelyn, as they work to solve the gruesome murder of a young scholar.
When a student bearing a striking resemblance to artists' renderings of Jesus Christ is found murdered -- by crucifixion -- in London's Jewish ghetto, 19th-century private detective Barker must hire an assistant to help him solve the sinister case. Out of all who answer an ad for a position with "some danger involved," the eccentric and enigmatic Barker chooses downtrodden Llewelyn, a gutsy young man whose murky past includes recent stints at both an Oxford college and an Oxford prison. As Llewelyn learns the ropes of his position, he is drawn deeper and deeper into Barker's peculiar world of vigilante detective work, as well as the dark heart of London's teeming underworld. Together they pass through chophouses, stables, and clandestine tea rooms, tangling with the early Italian mafia, a mad professor of eugenics, and other shadowy figures, inching ever closer to the shocking truth behind the murder.

My Review:

Fair warning, this review is going to be LONG, even for me. I really, truly, seriously LOVED this book – even more than I expected. And I had pretty high hopes going in.

We first meet our protagonists in a tried-and-true manner that does an excellent job of hinting at the mysteries and the reveals yet to come.

Cyrus Barker is a ‘private enquiry agent’ (read as private detective), in search of a new assistant, while down-so-low-bottom-looks-like-up Thomas Llewelyn, formerly of both Oxford University and Oxford Castle & Prison, has nothing left either to live for or to live on. He sees Barker’s advertisement as a decision point. Either he’ll get the job or he’ll throw himself in the Thames.

Of course, he gets the job – otherwise we wouldn’t have this marvelous book to read, let alone the series that follows.

But the job that he gets is nothing like he expected. On the one hand, his new employer likes to hold all his cards VERY close to his vest. Llewelyn is constantly flying blind, expected to figure things out by the seat of his pants.

Pants – along with every other stitch of clothing he has on – purchased for him by his employer, who is also providing food, board, education, and all the books the former scholar can read in his spare time – of which there is admittedly little.

Most important, Barker gives him purpose, keeps his mind fully engaged, and sets him to the task of learning the ins and outs of his new job while thinking on his feet and occasionally employing his fists.

But the ‘Help Wanted’ listing said that there was ‘some danger involved’ in the job, as the title of the book indicates. Barker’s previous assistant was killed while performing that job. Llewelyn will have to keep his wits about him every second to make sure that he doesn’t suffer the same fate.

Working with Cyrus Barker promises to be the making of him, IF he manages to survive it. We’ll certainly see how well he manages in the books ahead!

Escape Rating A+: I generally require my comfort reads to have a bit of body to hold my interest. I mean that literally, as my comfort reads tend to be historical mysteries, preferably in series, so that when I have a ‘bail and flail’ day – or week – there’s always another known quantity of a book to sweep me into its world.

Buuuut, I’m caught up with one series I was using as comfort reading, the Sebastian St. Cyr series. And I’m nearly caught up with its readalike series, Wrexford & Sloane. Which left me scrabbling for another, which is very much where Barker & Llewelyn came in.

This first entry in the Barker & Llewelyn series turned out to be a comfort read on not just one but multiple levels, which is pretty amazing.

Most importantly, the partnership of Barker & Llewelyn is at its very beginning in this book, and they are fascinating – partly because of the second reason. The period in which this series takes place is the Victorian era, the bailiwick of the Great Detective and his equally famous amanuensis. In other words, Barker & Llewelyn could easily find themselves in competition with Sherlock Holmes – even more than they already are.

It’s not difficult to see Barker as Holmes and Llewelyn as his Watson, but that famous duo serves mostly as a jumping off point for our protagonists in this series. This isn’t a true Holmes pastiche as the Lady Sherlock or The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes series, or the TV series Sherlock and Elementary, are.

Not that Barker doesn’t have similarities to Holmes, but more in the sense that any capable senior partner in a detective duo shares at least some characteristics with the Great Detective. What sets Barker apart is the way that Barker is, well, set apart.

Detectives are often outsiders in their own cultures, it’s what gives them the ability to observe in detachment and solve the case. Sherlock Holmes is an outsider because of his idiosyncrasies, as is made extremely apparent in the modern interpretations. However, from what little we know of Holmes’ earlier life, he’s at least a member of the squirearchy and was raised in at least upper middle class comfort with all of its privileges.

Barker has been an outsider all of his life, an English orphan abandoned in China, making his way around the globe from a rough start as a cabin boy, initially seeing the world from outside the British Empire and from the bottom up. He’s earned his place by working his way into it.

He’s also a considerably more human character than Holmes frequently is. Barker often hides the real depths of his humanity to outsiders, but it is always present to his intimates. It’s a much fuller portrait of a Victorian detective, and also one that, through Barker’s haphazard but global education, manages to credibly eschew the common prejudices of his day that Holmes exhibits in the original text.

Llewelyn is just as fascinating a character as Barker, and just as much of an outsider, although he comes at that perspective from an entirely different direction. He’s very much the apprentice in this first book, and so it should be. We’re just starting to get hints of how he ended up in depths of the slough of despond he is in when he arrives as Barker’s office for the first time, and his education in the arts of the ‘enquiry agent’ as Barker prefers to be called provide an in-depth introduction to their world.

On a personal note, part of what made this such a special comfort read for this reader is that the story takes place among the Jewish community of London in 1884 as a gruesome murder causes the leaders of that community to fear that a pogrom just like the ones that they or their families fled in Eastern Europe is about to boil over in London.

Much of the story is steeped in that community, and requires Barker to display his own familiarity with its customs and ways AND his respect for its people to Llewelyn. Even more importantly, the inside/outsiderness of the Jewish community in London, and Llewelyn’s open-mindedness to learning about it lets readers into a time and a place that history often sweeps under the carpet.

(Although my own family was still spread across Eastern Europe at this time period, I have pictures of my great-grandfather, and this would have been his generation, letting me connect to this story on a deeper level than I expected – which is where those multiple levels of comfort read come comfortably in.)

So I began Some Danger Involved in the hopes that the danger promised would lead me to a book and a series that would hold me in its thrall until the very last page, and give me something to look forward to whenever I next need a reading pick-me-up.

This first of Barker & Llewelyn’s investigations more than delivered, and I expect to dive back into their world in the next book in the series, To Kingdom Come, sometime over the holidays. If I can make myself wait even that long!