The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman (Children’s Lit, Historical Fiction)

The Shadow in the North takes place six years after The Ruby in the Smoke. During that time, Sally Lockhart has been to Cambridge, although because she is a woman she wasn’t granted a degree. She has gone into a partnership with Webster Garland, Frederick’s uncle, and she has opened her own financial consulting business with the help of Mr. Temple. Aside from his work in the successful photography business of Garland & Lockhart, Frederick runs a detective agency with Jim Taylor.

Just as he did in The Ruby in the Smoke, Philip Pullman does a masterful job of capturing the tone of the period. He takes the events, attitudes and conditions of London in 1878 and produces a very Victorian mystery. Even Pullman’s criminals are villainous in the style of the period; even the most pedestrian thugs have a tinge of Victorian horror about them.

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Of the three Sally Lockhart books I’ve read so far, The Shadow in the North makes me care most about its characters. I was really rooting for the romance between Frederick and Sally. Frederick’s death was unexpected and tragic, and quite a likely thing to happen. Isabel as a suicide, unwilling to let herself be saved even though her resistance was likely to get Fred killed, didn’t surprise me at all.

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Tags: Philip Pullman, Sally Lockhart