Black Silk and Sympathy by Deborah Challinor

Title: Black Silk and Sympathy

Author: Deborah Challinor

Genre: Crime, Historical Crime

Publisher: HarperCollins Australia

Published: 3^rd April 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 384

Price: $32.99

Synopsis: A dazzling new series from bestselling historical fiction author Deborah Challinor, exploring the fascinating world of Victorian funeral customs and featuring Sydney’s first female undertaker.

‘Men have been undertakers for hundreds of years. Not women, men. You don’t belong.’

Sydney, 1865. Seventeen-year-old Tatiana Caldwell travels from London to make a new life. Her path leads her to Crowe Funeral Services, where she apprentices under the tutelage of Titus Crowe, the enigmatic owner.

Tatty finds herself drawn to the fascinating conventions of the funeral trade – plumed horses and processions, mutes and mortuary trains, flowers and finery – as well as the more visceral new practice of embalming. Soon she marries, and after the sudden death of her husband, Titus, she becomes Sydney’s first female undertaker.

Her hard-won stability is shattered when Elias Nuttall, a ruthless rival in the funeral trade, accuses Tatty of murdering her husband. Facing public scorn and legal peril, Tatty gathers an unlikely band of allies in a battle to clear her name.

Black Silk and Sympathy is a riveting and realistic journey through the front parlours and dark alleys of 1860s Sydney, from the Botanic Gardens in the morning to the cemetery at midnight.

~*~

When Tatiana Caldwell travels to Sydney from London in 1865, she doesn’t expect what will happen at her place of employment, Crowe Funeral Services. First, she’s an apprentice to the owner, Titus Crowe. She learns how to embalm a body, and choose all the accoutrements. But when the novel opens, it begins long after all of this.

Initially, it begins at an inquest following Titus’s death in 1868. She’s Australia’s first female undertaker, and has many people rankled because she’s working with people that many others would rather she didn’t. And she has support from those in the death industry. Once the stage has been set for this, the reader is catapulted back into 1864, where everything changes for her in London, and she’s determined to make a new life for herself.

She’s drawn to the funeral trade. She’s intrigued by everything within it: the plumed horses, the processions, the clothes, the trimmings, and the coffins. The mutes and the mortuary trains, the flowers and the finery. Titus is in competition with Elias Nuttall, and they’re always trying to outdo each other. Always working to undermine each other, even if it means taking advantage of the people who require their services.

Whilst it had a lengthy set up, this novel is filled with rich detail, with everything you could possibly need to know with lots of misleads to ensure everyone doesn’t really know what is going on, but there are always hints that something more is coming. Where something is dark and distant at times, because everyone wants something from someone else. It ensures that the Victorian world of Sydney is richly rendered, from the locations, the buildings, the customs, the clothing and how everyone interacted with each other, and the role that death played in the Victorian world – it’s much different to what people do today.

What made this novel work was the way the mystery unravelled, setting things up during the first half before Titus dies, and then heading into the inquest and investigation, and the accusations from Elias. This was a very intriguing novel, where the life of a woman undertaker, taking control of her own life was the central plot. This historical fiction novel explores what was expected of women in the 1860s. Especially working in a profession usually occupied by men. It’s a fictional take on the idea of female undertakers in Sydney, and the lack of at this time.

This is what makes this novel work. It’s a what if there was a female undertaker in Sydney who was caught up in a murder investigation? It also explores how people who work in the death industry could easily kill someone and not leave a trace, or make it look like natural causes. Each character in this novel is flawed, and we know some aren’t as good as they seem on the surface, and very unsympathetic. It means that it does set up that there are lots of possibilities for who could have killed Titus.

But it is, in the end, a story about women reclaiming power and overcoming dodgy business practices as well as blackmail and covering up deaths that looked natural but weren’t. In the end, it was a cleverly brought together novel, filled with rich research and information. It had a lot to unpack throughout the novel, and I enjoyed reading this one, and how people you least expected to come together uniting against someone who was not that nice at all.

It was a very interesting novel, and one that highlighted some important issues that still affect society and people today. When I first read it, it read like a standalone book, but I think a second one came out this year, making this a potential series. Another great crime book!