Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem

Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem is a 1994 novel by the English author Peter Ackroyd.^[1] It is an unusual murder mystery, framed in a cleverly conceived story featuring real historical characters, and set in a flawless recreation of Victorian London.^[2]

Plot summary

As Elizabeth Cree sits every day in a courtroom, on trial for the murder of her husband, the story moves from courthouse to music hall to the back alleys of Limehouse, the notorious district of Victorian London, teeming with the poorest of the poor, the most violent of criminals and helpless preyed upon immigrants, following the trail of slaughter laid by the Golem, an almost mythical predecessor of Jack the Ripper.

Fact and fiction blend effortlessly as Dan Leno, king of the music-hall comedians is dragged unwittingly into the investigation of one of London’s most notorious murders. When Karl Marx and George Gissing are connected to the same crime the possibilities are endless.

According to the Independent on Sunday ‘Ackroyd has pulled off the greatest coup of all, a four square crime novel…as aesthetically pleasing as it is morally shocking’. And the Observer called it ‘a flawlessly good read’.^[3][4]

References