If you like mysteries that are more bright than grim, you’ll like this story. John Pickett is a young Bow Street Runner, rescued from the streets as a boy by the Bow Street magistrate. Lady Julia Fieldhurst is the childless wife of a quite horrible Viscount. Between the two of them they have to find out who stabbed Lord Fieldhurst in the neck with a pair of nail scissors before Lady Fieldhurst is arrested and sent to the gallows. Except for one long and quite obvious wild goose chase, and how plain it becomes to the reader but not one of the characters just who the murderer is, it’s an engaging story with touches of humor and a number of fairly interesting characters along the way. The attraction between the two principal characters may never be resolved because of their vastly different social standings — there was simply no social mobility in the period in which the book is set — but it adds some degree of interest to the characters.