Murder at the Fitzwilliam

I’ll admit, I approached *Murder at the Fitzwilliam* with skepticism—another historical mystery trading on the coattails of Jack the Ripper lore? But Eldridge subverts expectations from the first chapter. The murder victim isn’t some anonymous prostitute or a corrupt noble; it’s a *librarian*, and the crime scene is a locked rare books room where the real weapon might be a misplaced comma in a medieval text. That’s the kind of specificity that hooks you. Eldridge’s background as a historian shines in the details: the politics of academic publishing in 1893, the way a working-class detective navigates Cambridge’s ivory towers, even the *smell* of the Fitzwilliam’s reading rooms. It’s immersive without ever feeling like a lecture. Wickham’s narration is a clinic in restraint. His Daniel Wilson carries the weight of a man who’s seen too much, but there’s a flicker of dark humor in his delivery—like when he deadpans, *“Another scholar with more degrees than common sense”*—that keeps the tone from tilting into gloom. The production is flawless, though I’ll dock half a point for the occasional over-enunciation of Latin phrases, which pulls you out of the moment. My bigger critique? The female characters, while sharp-tongued and clever, sometimes feel like they’re there to *prove* how progressive the story is rather than existing organically. Still, the final act’s twist—hinging on a bibliographic forgery so audacious it’ll make book lovers gasp—is worth the price of admission alone. If you’re tired of historical mysteries that romanticize the past, this one’s for you: it’s clever, cynical, and refreshingly free of rose-tinted nostalgia.