Book For The Week - 9/19/11

Murder On Bank Street

by

Victoria Thompson

Often,  in between heavier books,  I sandwich in a mystery.  Mysteries are not particularly my favorite genre of book but they do well to entertain in a lighter way and so are a good escape.   After "The Thirteenth Tale"  it was time for something lighter.   Therefore I turned to Victoria Thompson's Gaslight Series.  The heroine of The Gaslight Series is Sarah Brandt.  The setting for The Gaslight Series is New York City in the late 1800s.  Sarah is a nurse midwife who serves the poorer women of the New York tenements.   The plot of most of the books is that a murder takes place in a tenement building and Sarah becomes involved in solving it.  She has a friendship that has sprung up with one of the police detectives.   As the books progress they deal with various  women's issues, including: childbirth,  poverty,  crime, corruption in police departments and health issues of varying types.  Sarah Brandt is a widow.  Her husband,  who was a doctor,  was murdered.   In Murder On Bank Street,  her detective friend is determined to solve the crime in which Sarah's husband was murdered even though it is several years old.   Just prior to his death,  Dr Brandt had been doing case studies on women who had Erotomania and were fixated on their doctors.   See THIS .  In the book it is referred to as "Old Maid's Disease".   I listened to the book during my commute and at the very end the author adds a note in her own voice where she encourages victims of stalkers to go to the following WEBSITE  For an entire list of the Gaslight Series go HERE.  One of my contacts here at MP recommended this series to me and I have enjoyed a couple of the books.  They are a fun series to read and with my line of work  I find them particularly interesting.