Pour a warm beverage and settle in with Paraic O’Donnell’s exceptional third novel, The Naming of the Birds, a thrilling gothic mystery set in Victorian London. The opening section takes readers to a dreary scene in 1872 that reads like a particularly Grimm fairy tale: A group of orphans survives a horrific fire at a place known as the Asylum, only to be secretly carted away to another horrifying institution, where they are given new names, called after birds. One of the children, a girl now called Nightingale, carries secrets from that fire, which “taught her things about the world’s secret nature and her own.” Nightingale has one friend there, a boy now called Finch, who tells her, “I talk to you because you’re the only one who might be able to make sense of it all.”
After that chilling introduction, the action fast-forwards 22 years to 1894, where Scotland Yard Inspector Henry Cutter and his young partner, Sergeant Gideon Bliss, find themselves pursuing a skilled serial killer who seems to be targeting aging civil servants, some of them of high rank. Their murders have been achieved with assassin-esque meticulousness, and the victims are left in haunting, precisely arranged scenes that include the bones of children.
Fans of O’Donnell’s previous book, The House on Vesper Sands, will welcome the return of Cutter and Bliss, along with their sidekick, Octavia Hillington, a vibrant, fearless and piercing journalist who helps them track down the killer. They form a particularly dynamic trio: Cutter is a crusty, grumpy, but determined detective; Bliss is sensitive and fearful, but equally dogged; Hillington is an undaunted Victorian change-maker.
O’Donnell writes and plots with admirable precision, leading readers down a series of intriguing labyrinths to discover what exactly happened to those children back in 1872, and how that incident may be connected to these present-day murders. He is a master of big strokes and small, inserting touches of humor and insight without lessening the tension. He uses the bird theme judiciously throughout: They appear from time to time like eerie witnesses to the unfolding action. And there is a lot of big, glorious action as Cutter, Bliss and Hillington risk their lives to uncover these frightful truths. As Cutter tells his sidekicks, “We are going to see more than mere trickery. We are going to see the performance of a lifetime.” In the end, readers are left with all that and more, including weighty questions to ponder about the nature of justice and revenge.
The Naming of the Birds is a delicious, breathtaking romp that will have readers looking over their shoulders as they quickly turn its pages.
