A grave robbery by Deanna Raybourn

Series: Veronica Speedwell (#9)

Format: 326 pages, Hardcover

Published: March 12, 2024 by Berkley

Historical mystery/Library

Another murder, another adventure. Veronica and Stoker has made up again and life is good. Until they get a wax figure, who is not wax but an embalmed woman. Creepy.

Veronica and Stoker are not really pulling their weight here. They have help from a cop and a journalist and those do most of the work. They even say so at the end.

Who is the woman? How was she killed? How has she been like this for 15 years? There is some mad science behind this. A nice mystery.

I do still like these, but like with all long running series, I would like to see an end one day.

I really do not have much to say. Good book.

Lord Rosemorran has purchased a wax figure of a beautiful reclining woman and asks Stoker to incorporate a clockwork mechanism to give the Rosemorran Collection its own Sleeping Beauty in the style of Madame Tussaud’s. But when Stoker goes to cut the mannequin open to insert the mechanism, he makes a gruesome discovery: this is no wax figure. The mannequin is the beautifully preserved body of a young woman who was once very much alive. But who would do such a dreadful thing, and why?

Sleuthing out the answer to this question sets Veronica and Stoker on their wildest adventure yet. From the underground laboratories of scientists experimenting with electricity to resurrect the dead in the vein of Frankenstein to the traveling show where Stoker once toured as an attraction, the gaslit atmosphere of London in October is the perfect setting for this investigation into the unknown. Through it all, the intrepid pair is always one step behind the latest villain—a man who has killed once and will stop at nothing to recover the body of the woman he loved. Will they unmask him in time to save his next victim? Or will they become the latest figures to be immortalized in his collection of horrors?