The Charles Dickens Murders (A Beth Austin Mystery) [Hardcover]

Edith Skom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 1998

Edith Skom returns, better than ever, with another clever tale of English professor and amateur sleuth Beth Austin.  With her unique ability to twist a plot with humor, style, and flair, Skom is certain to meet her fans' great expectations.  The Charles Dickens Murders is perfect for readers who enjoy the books of Amanda Cross and Elizabeth Peters.

On a sweltering summer night, a woman is murdered in her hospital bed in New York City.  Almost a thousand miles away, Midwestern University professor Beth Austin is leading a class through the complete works of Charles Dickens.  The framework that connects this tale of two cities begins to unfold when Beth learns something she never could have imagined: forty years ago, her mother was involved in a treacherous love triangle at the University of Chicago.  

Disturbed by her mother's past of painful lies, secrets, and murder, Beth is determined to find out the truth-no matter the cost.  As she delves into the story of the man her mother loved and her rival for his affections, Beth discovers that these old deadly secrets may well destroy her own dreams for the future.


Edith Skom is the author of The Mark Twain Murders and The George Eliot Murders and has been nominated for the Agatha, Macavity, and the Anthony Award.  She lives outside of Chicago, Illinois, where she is a lecturer at Northwestern University.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Devout Dickensians could feel slighted by this third book in Edith Skom's literary-slanted series of mysteries: despite a few mentions of The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Bleak House, there's not much Dickens on view. But Skom creates such a lively picture of a group of women students at the University of Chicago in the 1940s that most readers will forgive her for not living up to their great expectations.

English professor Beth Austin is in fact working on a class about Drood for next semester when her mother drops a bombshell: there was a similar Dickensian love triangle and an unsolved murder on the UC campus when she was a student there 50 years before. A group of women known as the Fourth Floor Gang at the Dall Hall dormitory were first victimized by a sneak thief whose identity was widely known but never actually proved. Then came the murder of one of the students, which the police could never pin on anyone. Beth's interest is so piqued that she decides to do some digging. It quickly becomes a tale of two cities when the recent death in a New York hospital of one of the surviving members of the Fourth Floor Gang is linked to the first murder. Skom's first two books about Austin, The George Eliot Murders and The Mark Twain Murders, are available in paperback. --Dick Adler

From Publishers Weekly

Midwestern University English prof Beth Austin takes her third crack at solving a murder case (after The George Eliot Murders, 1995), again mining a literary classic for clues. This time, her mother's collegiate past and two Dickens tales, Bleak House and the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood, provide the murder and the template respectively. Beth's mother, Laurie, discloses that, during her college stay at the same university in the late 1940s, there was a scandalous love triangle and an unsolved murder. Her account takes Beth?and readers?back to Dall Hall, a girl's dorm, and the friends there known as the Fourth Floor Gang. The girls' camaraderie is fractured by suspicions rising from some petty thefts; it is then destroyed when one of them is shot to death. Beth is fascinated enough by the story and her mother's observation that "the murder was never solved?and it never will be" to try her hand at unraveling the puzzle, tracking down the women the girls have become and resurrecting the past. Beth learns of the recent death in Manhattan of a Fourth Floor Gang member, which starts her on another, more immediate investigation. In a final scene, Beth assembles the friends and some of their associates to lead them to the answers of a number of questions that have infiltrated their present lives from their shared past.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press; First Edition edition (November 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038531230X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385312301
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,008,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Murder Mystery, April 24, 2000

By 

Top Dragon (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Charles Dickens Murders: A Beth Austin Mystery (Beth Austin Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

I confess, I was first attracted to this novel because of the title. I had not read an Edith Skom book before but am interested in Dickens as well as mysteries. I am very glad I picked it up and can see now I will have to go back and purchase the other two novels by Skom!

The narrative skips about in time some as we spend the first half of the novel living the story of the past (where/when the murder takes place) and then spend the second half with the protagonist as she attempts to solve the mystery. The skipping around in time was not difficult to follow and was actually a refreshing approach to telling the tale.

The characters were realistic and the plot was not at all predictable. At one point, one of the characters compares their situation with the plot of Agatha Christie's classic "Ten Little Indians" (also called "And Then There Were None"). Coincidentally, I had read that book, as well, only last month and thought the comparisons valid.

Enjoy this book, while I am out looking for others by the same author!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Unhappily, this fan found Skom's new novel a bit thin, January 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Charles Dickens Murders (A Beth Austin Mystery) (Hardcover)

Having read her other books, I had actively looked for the appearance of a new book by this author. However, I was a bit disappointed with The Charles Dickens Murders.

For one thing, I never felt that comfortable with the constant time shifts Skom uses to present the mystery, an unsolved murder that occurred when the mother of Skom's sleuth was a college student. Also, I don't know whether it was because there were perhaps too many characters, or whether it was that almost all of them were portrayed as somewhat unattractive people, but when I reached the end and learned whodunnit and why, I found I couldn't really care all that much. Smaller complaints include a romantic coincidence that was too hard to see as anything but a literary device, and an evil pursuer who showed up with very little build-up and then quickly gave up trying to pursue our heroine after one try, OK, maybe one and a half tries. It hardly seemed worth the effort.

Due to my enjoyment of Skom's earlier books I'll still look forward to her next novel, but I thought this one was a bit underdeveloped.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars superb cerebral mystery using works of Dickens for clues., September 20, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Charles Dickens Murders (A Beth Austin Mystery) (Hardcover)

Laurie Austin admits to her daughter, Beth, that in the late 1940's, she was involved in a love triangle and unsolved murder when she attended Midwestern University. Beth, an English professor at the same university, is thoroughly fascinated with her mother's tale, especially the claim that the killing will remain unsolved forever. Since she has had some success in solving mysteries (see THE GEORGE ELIOT MURDERS and THE MARK TWAIN MURDERS), Beth decides to investigate.

Beth begins by looking up her mother's dorm pals, The Fourth Floor Gang. To her surprise, Beth learns that one of the women, was recently murdered in Manhattan, which leads Beth into a second inquiry. Using references from Dickens' BLEAK HOUSE and THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD, Beth begins to find a literary pattern to the two five-decade apart murders.

One of life's most difficult situations is to wait for an Edith Skom novel. Though they are several years apart (three novels in almost a decade), they are all great. This time the talented author uses Dickens as a base to paint a masterpiece that will delight readers of cerebral murder mysteries. Her current work, THE CHARLES DICKENS MURDERS, is another clever winner by a great writer, who has made the Austin mysteries some of the best female amateur sleuth novels ever written.

Harriet Klausner