Missing pieces

Imagine nearly completing a 1,000-piece jigsaw only to discover that one or more pieces are missing. Those of us who regularly do jigsaw puzzles don't have to imagine it. We've been there. This feeling is something like what one feels after reading The Laws of Murder (2014) by Charles Finch. There are pieces missing.

The novel opens in London in 1876 with the aristocrat Charles Lenox, having left Parliament, a partner in a struggling detective agency. The other partners are carrying their weight, but for all his previous successes, Lenox is struggling to attract business.

Then Jenkins of the Scotland Yard is found murdered next to the home of Wakefield, a lord with a suspicious background. Jenkins had left word that if anything happened to him, Lenox should be called in to help with the investigation. The first suspect, naturally enough, is Wakefield — until Wakefield's body is found in the hold of ship about to leave for the Orient.

The investigation, with its many turns, and the office politics within Lenox's agency keep the reader engaged. Arrests are made, yet it never becomes clear who actually committed the murders. Will the murderer go free for lack of evidence? Or has the killer yet to be found? Do we have to read the next book in the series to find the answers?

Missing puzzle pieces are a joy to find while the mostly assembled puzzle is still on the table. Similarly, readers prefer fictional puzzles to be solved with the book still in hand, not in some other book that may or may not ever be read. Or, worse, never solved at all.