Lovesey, Peter: Swing, Swing Together

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Swing, Swing Together is a likeable enough but forgettable mystery in Peter Lovesey's Sergeant Cribb series. Cribb and Constable Thackeray are investigating a pair of homicides on the Thames. Both victims were drowned in the same way, a few days apart, and by lucky happenstance the likely suspects were spied in the middle of the night as they floated downriver: Miss Harriet Shaw, a student at the Elfrida College for the Training of Female Elementary Teachers, happened to be breaking curfew and a bunch of other rules by skinny dipping in the river. Not the done thing in Victorian England, mind, but her lapse sets Harriet on a path to adventure and romance, even if it does put her intended career as a school teacher in jeopardy. There's much talk in the book of another book, Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889, which told the story of a trip on the Thames taken by three men and their dog. The book was a bestseller and apparently inspired many readers to make the same trip as the book's protagonists. So it's against this historically accurate backdrop of literary enthusiasts taking to the Thames for pleasure that Cribb and Thackeray conduct their investigation, for the murderers they seek appear to be among Jerome's ardent fans.