1913 East Sussex. Bones discovered in a dried out river bed are determined by Dr Dody McCleland to be less than ten years old, of a female and one that was murdered. Unfortunaely for Tristram Slater, finder of the bones, not what he was hoping for. Dody persuades Chief Inspector Matthew Pike to investigate.
For me not enough of a mystery, too much social welfare diatribe. ( )

The Scent of Murder is the third remarkable installment in Felicity Young’s historical mystery series featuring Dr Dody McCleland, autopsy surgeon. It follows The Dissection of Murder and Antidote to Murder, both five star reads, which impressed me with their rich historical setting, superb characterisation and intriguing plots.

When, in The Scent of Murder, a human skeleton is discovered buried in a stream bed in the grounds of Fitzgibbon Hall the guests, present for a four day house party, speculate the bones could be thousands of years old. Dody, reluctantly chaperoning her younger sister Florence and her new beau, Tristam, volunteers to examine the remains, glad of the excuse to forgo participation in the fox hunt and avoid their lecherous host, Tristam’s uncle, Sir Desmond. With careful analysis, Dody concludes the bones have lain hidden for no more than ten years and the skeleton is that of a young female murdered by gunshot. Evidence found with the body suggests the girl was a resident of the local poorhouse but no one seems interested in identifying her, or hunting for her killer, so Dody calls on the help of her paramour, Chief Detective Inspector Matthew Pike of Scotland Yard. Together their investigation uncovers a conspiracy of greed, ghostly visions, and a predator who will stop at nothing to protect his deviant secrets.

The pace of this mystery is perhaps a little more sedate that previous installments but lacks none of the clever and well crafted plotting I have come to expect from Felicity Young. The ‘cold case’ is the catalyst for unveiling a cache of secrets in the small hamlet of Piltdown, including murder, corruption, profiteering and perversion. Both Dody and Pike face challenges in their investigation, the local constabulary and magistrate, whose pockets are lined by Sir Desmond Fitzgibbon, resent Pike’s presence and are largely uncooperative and Dody is distracted by a frightening attack on her person, Tristam’s injury and an outbreak of Scarlet Fever at the neighbouring workhouse.

The novels in this series always reflect the female experience of the social and political milieu at the turn of the century and The Scent of Murder is no exception. In this instance, Young explores the sexual exploitation and abuse of women and children, vulnerable to the desires of those who wield power of them, unable to complain knowing they are likely to disbelieved and probably found at fault. This is particularly true for the girls of the Piltdown Workhouse who are at the mercy of the sadistic Matron and Master in the Scent of Murder, but no woman is immune. When Dody is brutally attacked by Sir Desmond he taunts her with the knowledge that reporting the incident would undoubtedly ruin her reputation and career, while his would remain unscathed.

A fascinating forensic element of Dody and Pike’s investigation is Pike’s attempt to use the fledgling science of ballistics to identify the gun that fired the fatal shot, and subsequently its owner. It is an interesting process requiring the co-operation of a dentist and blacksmith, and not that different in technique to the method used today.

The Scent of Murder, like its predecessors, offers vivid historical detail, compelling characters and an absorbing story. The Dr Dody McCleland Mysteries are an excellent historical crime series, certainly one of my favourites, and I’m eagerly looking forward to its continuation with The Insanity of Murder in 2015. ( )

You know that a fictional character has really gotten under your skin when horrid things that happen to them keep you awake late into the night. So it is with Dr Dorothy ‘Dody’ McCleland, the autopsy surgeon who has appeared now in three of Felicity Young’s historical mysteries set just after the official end of the Edwardian era in England and whose latest escapades made me worried and wakeful several nights this week.

In THE SCENT OF MURDER Dody is playing chaperone for her younger sister Florence who has followed her new beau, Tristram, to the country home of his uncle, Sir Desmond Fitzgibbon. Tristram, a budding archaeologist, discovers a skeleton on his uncle’s property and asks Dody to determine the age of the bones. It is when she pronounces the bones belong to someone recently deceased and insists on informing the local police of her suspicions of foul play that things become truly dangerous for Dody and some of her housemates.

One of the (many) things I adore about Dody is that she is a very practical feminist. While her sister and the radical suffragette group to which she belongs have been busy waging their version of a political war, Dody has gotten on with forging the life and career she wants, and though the compromises she’s had to make are frustrating they’re undoubtedly realistic and give her character a more credible sensibility than some of her fictional colleagues (e.g. Ariana Franklin’s medieval medical woman Adelia Aguilar). In this novel Dody is subjected to a particularly horrendous incident in addition to the usual patronising behaviour and misogyny she encounters but Young resisted the urge to be heavy-handed with the sensitive subject matter which, for me, makes it all the more believable (hence the lost sleep).

Young’s lightness of touch is also evident in her storytelling. It is entirely possible to wholeheartedly enjoy the book simply as a historical whodunit with the requisite amount of adventure and lush period detail. The book does explore social and political themes, including but not only the general treatment of women at this time in history, but these never take on the feel of a lecture as happens with some novels.

Because the whole series takes place at a time when English suffragettes were at their most active one thing that connects each instalment is the exploration of how the disenfranchised are treated by society. Here that theme takes a different turn when action eventually leads to a local workhouse where the best that the impoverished children forced to live there can hope for is to be treated with shabby indifference but far more likely is a harsher form of abuse. Many of the adults involved the management of the workhouse behave as if it is their right to perform such abuse, a scenario not that dissimilar from what must have been the circumstances for decades in many of the institutions currently the subject of a Royal Commission in my own country. Reading a book with this subject matter at the same time as I’m reading daily news headlines about similar abuses of power which have occurred during my lifetime gave this book an immediacy not often present in historical novels.

There are yet more delights in this novel including another strong appearance by Chief Inspector (and Dody’s love-interest) Matthew Pike, a chance to see some more of Dody and Florence’s unorthodox family and an unusual séance but I’m going to stop droning on and simply urge you to track down a copy of THE SCENT OF MURDER (and its two predecessors). Immediately if not sooner.

Somebody, years ago, in "one of those long and philosophical nights around the dinner table" made a comment about history always being written by the victor, and it's stayed with me ever since (even though it's not an original proposition). I'm always reminded of it when a new Dody McCleland book arrives. Although they are fictional books, they speak with a resonance and an authority which draws a vivid picture of the time of the suffragettes, using the point of view of the women, demonstrating the utter stupidity and nastiness of the restrictions placed on women, without turning absolutely all the men into demons. In fact there are demons and good from both sexes.

Whilst there's a lot about THE SCENT OF MURDER that feels instructive, in the way that it draws a picture of life in that period, all of that is woven cleverly into a very solid crime fiction plot. Even with a touch of the cold case about this one.

Newcomers to the series (and you may need to explain why you've not read the two earlier books!) will get enough of the background to Dr McCleland to be able to fill in the blanks, although knowing why she's an autopsy surgeon in particular really fleshes out the pettiness of the restrictions on women. You'll know from this book that Chief Inspector Matthew Pike is a love interest, as well as a colleague. The earlier books will fill in the history to their relationship, and their own personal situations. There's actually a touching and quite clever statement going on with these two - a respectful and equal professional partnership, alongside a loving and supportive, albeit secret, personal partnership. Goes to show that feminism doesn't have to automatically put the feminine and the masculine at odds.

Before you start to think that THE SCENT OF MURDER is some sort of chest thumping treatise ... it most definitely is not. All of this series is written with a careful touch, much of the subtext is exactly that - subtext - and it would not be at all surprising that readers don't notice it / don't care. These are great stories, featuring really good characters, with a particularly strong feeling of both time and place. Needless to say, THE SCENT OF MURDER is an outstanding example of what's really really good about Australian crime writing.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-scent-murder-felicity-young ( )