A Deadly Affair (Angus Brodie and Mikaela Forsythe Murder Mystery)

A Deadly Affair is one of Carla Simpson’s mystery novels in her Angus Brodie and Mikaela Forsythe historical mystery series, set in late Victorian London and following the partnership between the former Scotland Yard detective Angus Brodie and the wealthy widow Mikaela Forsythe across multiple connected cases. Simpson is an established American writer of historical romance and historical mystery whose catalogue spans multiple decades and multiple connected series.

The Angus Brodie series fits into the wider late Victorian and Edwardian mystery subgenre that has been a steady seller in historical mystery for many years. The pairing of a working class male investigator with a wealthy female partner whose social access opens doors that the male partner could not enter on his own gives the series a useful structural dynamic that the various entries can develop across the wider plot arcs. Brodie’s professional investigative skills and his Scotland Yard background combine with Forsythe’s social position and her own quick mind to give the series the kind of capable investigative team that the genre rewards.

A Deadly Affair, like other entries in the wider series, would involve a specific case that Brodie and Forsythe investigate alongside the slowly developing personal relationship between them and the wider London setting that the series uses as its world. The Victorian London setting is rendered with the kind of period detail that the historical mystery genre requires, with attention to the social codes, the various neighborhoods, the police procedures, and the wider cultural context of the period providing the atmospheric weight that the genre depends on.

Carla Simpson writes the kind of historical mystery that combines real period detail with the satisfying procedural and romantic elements that the genre’s readers come for. The cases tend to involve the kind of social and political complications that the period naturally produces, with the various crimes Brodie and Forsythe investigate often connecting to wider Victorian social tensions including class differences, the early feminist movement, the various fringe political movements, and the general moral and social transformations that the late Victorian era was working through.

For readers who enjoy late Victorian mystery from authors like Anne Perry, Charles Finch, Tasha Alexander, or Deanna Raybourn, Carla Simpson is operating in adjacent territory. Her catalogue is large enough that picking a starting point can feel daunting, but the Angus Brodie series can be entered at its first volume and followed through the connected world that the wider series builds out. A Deadly Affair is a comfortable entry into her catalogue and a fair sample of what she does. For new readers curious about the late Victorian mystery subgenre, this kind of book is an accessible starting point.