The Rookery

Penny Green is on the way home from the library when she is knocked over and a lad steals her handbag.  Inside the bag are notes and diaries of her father’s.  A man gives chase and she follows.  When they meet in Seven Dials, the lad is nowhere to be found.  The man who chased him had given up.  Moments later a cry of “murder” is heard nearby.  The boy who had stolen her bag was the victim.

Speaking to people at the scene, Penny learns that there had been two other similar murders in the area called St. Giles Rookery recently.

The following morning, Penny goes to the police station to make a statement to Inspector Fenton.  She questions him about the other two killings.  As she leaves the station, Fenton arrests Reuben O’Donoghue, the man who had helped her, for the murder.

Penny starts her own investigation and learns that each of the victims had a connection to one another in small ways.  Could their killer be known to all of them?  She prepares notes on what she has learned and presents it to the police, but will they act on them?

O’Donoghue is later released, but as a result of the things that Penny has heard about him, she has started having second thoughts about him.

She meets with Inspector James Blakely, of Scotland Yard, informs her that he has taken over the case.  Two days later, another man is murdered in his pawn shop.

Later, Blakely receives letters from two different men.  One suggesting that O’Donoghue is the killer, and the other telling Blakely that he is the killer.  How will Blakely find out the truth?  The writer named the sister of the latest victim, and a few days later, she too, was murdered.  How many more will die before Blakely catches the killer?  Or will he?

Blakely has one suspect in mind, while Penny has another.  Which one will it be?  Author Emily Organ has a few plot twists before revealing the killer.  A jolly good read.