Returning to check up on her patient, Sarah find the house surrounded by a small crowd. One of the boarders has been murdered – the girl Sarah spied the night before. Though sad to hear of the death, Sarah's prime concern is her patient and when the police attempt to deny her entry to the house, she argues with them. This draws the attention of the detective in charge, Frank Malloy. In the course of questioning her and what she knows of the crime and the victim, Malloy decides to ask Sarah to examine the victim's possessions. It is Sarah who discovers the girl's identity: Alicia VanDamm, the much-younger sister of her old friend.

Why was Alicia at the boarding house? Why was she murdered?

Sarah has good reason to doubt the willingness of a New York City police detective to solve this case. The VanDamms are unlikely to want the scandal of a murder investigation and without the promise of a hefty reward from Alicia's family, Malloy is unlikely to want to put any effort into finding Alicia's killer. Sarah realizes that it is up to her to find out what happened, to learn why Alicia was apparently hiding from her wealthy family and why someone killed her.

The corrupt, vibrant, crowded world of late 19th century New York fills the pages of Murder in Astor Place. Malloy is a policeman in an era when it took a monumental bribe to gain promotion, when the Supervisor of Police had perfected "the third degree" of 'persuasive' questioning. Teddy Roosevelt is Commissioner and promises reform, but Malloy is skeptical: reformers come and go and the system remains.

The mystery is solid, if not complicated. I was able to figure out some of what was going on, though not nearly all. There are solid suspects, enough that I never figured out who had killed Alicia or why.

The best part of Murder in Astor Place was the shifting relationship between Sarah and Malloy. Beginning in dislike, softening to prickly distrust and then grudging respect, by novel's end they're something like friends, a friendship threaded with growing attraction. Malloy is not as corrupt as he and Sarah think; if Sarah sometimes leaps without looking, she is still able to learn from her mistakes.

Sarah is convinced on the last page that she'll never see Malloy again. This reader sincerely doubts that, and can't wait until they share another adventure.

--Katy Cooper