De Quincey can become a habit

After having read Thomas De Quincey's famous Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821) a couple of months back, I am amazed that David Morrell was able to use it as a springboard for an excellent historical mystery, let alone a whole series of them. Yet Ruler of the Night (2016) makes fine reading, while solving, even if in fiction, some mysteries left hanging by De Quincey's memoir.

De Quincey himself is the hero of Morrell's series (which began with Murder as a Fine Art), and like the real De Quincey, he tends to spend most of his money on two things, opium to feed his habit and books to feed his mind. There is little money left to pay his rent, and so eventually he must move on, usually leaving a flat full of books behind. Now a former landlord has threatened to sell his books to cover back rent, and De Quincey, along with his lovely daughter, Emily, takes a train to try to rescue those books. On the train, however, a bloody murder occurs, and De Quincey, with his talent for solving mysteries, becomes involved.

At the heart of the mystery he finds a wealthy woman, Carolyn, whom De Quincey knew as an impoverished street girl years before. He has always wondered what happened to her, and in this novel he finds out.

Other real people play roles in this story, including Queen Victoria and Lord Palmerston, the prime minister. Morrell, in fact, works hard to make his historical novel historically consistent, such as by making the hydropathy craze of that period central to the plot. Yet this is still fiction, and most of the key characters are entirely fictional. These include two Scotland Yard detectives, Ryan and Becker, whom De Quincey assists in getting to the bottom of the murder mystery, although exactly who is assisting whom is another question. Both detectives are in love with De Quincey's daughter, adding to the tension, or at least to the addictive pleasure of this story and the series as a whole.