Deep Dark – A Cassia Thorne Mystery

A Deep Dark by Zohra Nabi is a haunting and atmospheric historical, fantasy, mystery set in the back streets of Victorian London. Cassia Thorne is a fierce and determined musician and ballad seller who sells her songs by day and spends her nights in Fleet Prison with her imprisoned father. Cassia spends her time with other children who are also working, hustling and making the best of their tough lives and when some of these children begin vanishing from the streets and no one in authority will pay heed, Cassia is determined to find them.

Cassia enlists help from Teo, a resourceful pickpocket with street smarts, and Felix, a loyal friend from a very different background, and together they embark on a dangerous investigation. Rumours and strange music converge around the stolen children and Cassia’s search leads her underneath the city where myth and menace blend into the city’s rivers. The further they go, the more the children find out about a sinister conspiracy involving mysterious men in blue coats and a monster that lives beneath old London.

Nabi recreates the danger, poverty, injustice, and deep social divides of nineteenth-century London but also its heart and community. The city teems with life and with peril, it is a place where the vulnerable slip through the cracks and the rich have all the power. She doesn’t shy away from the realities and cruelty of the time (including death) – although everything is carefully and sensitively told. The writing is as powerful, brave, angry and sharp-witted as Cassia herself and the action is fast paced and exciting throughout.

Cassia Thorne is a fabulous heroine; talented, smart and feisty but deeply likeable and compassionate. There is a chapter of the next book at the end of this one, and I am sure there will be many fans eagerly waiting for Cassia’s next fantastical, historical adventure.