gervase_fen | Disordered Daggers : The Anarchists' Club by Alex Reeve (2019)

From the publisher's blurb:

"It's been a year since Leo Stanhope lost the woman he loved, and came closing to losing his own life. Now, more than ever, he is determined to keep his head down and stay safe, without risking those he holds dear. But Leo's hopes for peace and security are shattered when the police unexpectedly arrive at his lodgings: a woman has been found murdered at a club for anarchists, and Leo's address is in her purse. When Leo is taken to the club by the police, he is shocked to discover there a man from his past, a man who knows Leo's birth identity. And if Leo does not provide him with an alibi for the night of the woman's killing, he is going to share this information with the authorities.

If Leo's true identity is unmasked, he will be thrown into an asylum, but if he lies... will he be protecting a murderer?"

Leo Stanhope's secret is that his birth identity is Lottie Pritchard, and he has been living in hiding from his family for over ten years. We're in London in 1881, and the deft first person narrration successfully conveys Leo's dread of exposure. His involuntary involvement in the case is complicated by the unwanted custody he attains of the victim's two young children - and the growth of his feelings for them (as he muses, are they paternal or maternal?)

This was an agreeable page turner, which at one point slyly namechecks Wilkie Collins (and I'm sure he would have approved of the cliffhanger chapter endings, Victorian hypocrisy and dirty family secrets). There's also a touch of early Sarah Waters (a nice cameo appearance by Vesta Tilley) and Lee Jackson (Leo Stanhope walks some heroic distances across London, cf. London Dust (2003)). I can't recommend it unreservedly because the shadow of and fallout from the previous book (The House on Half Moon Street) hangs over a fair amount of the narrative - and as is traditional, the author can't go in to too much detail about events in that book so as not to spoil its mysteries.