This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids.  You can browse the book matches here.

Blind Justice by Bruce Alexander: First of a series featuring Sir John Fielding, a magistrate who in the 18th Century co-founded London's first police force, the Bow Street Runners. The narrator is Jeremy Proctor, a 13-year-old orphan who serves as Fielding's eyes. Fielding is blind. The series opens with the "suicide" of a lord known for his gambling and extra-marital affairs.

If you enjoyed the characters, mystery, and era of the novel, here are some other titles you may enjoy. (You can also see this book match in the catalog here):

Cut to the Quick by Kate Ross
To the ranks of great sleuths of ages past, add a new candidate - Julian Kestrel - a detective as historically authentic as Brother Cadfael and as dashing as Lord Peter Wimsey. Kestrel is the reigning dandy of London in the 1820s, famous for his elegant clothes and his unflappable sangfroid. (worldcat.org)

In its first chapters, Sweet Tooth begins like Dickens’ David Copperfield.  Serena Frome (rhymes with Plume) tells of her unremarkable childhood and how she ends up working as a spy for Britain’s MI5. With her blonde and beautiful looks, she is a bit of a Bond Girl and wreaks havoc on the men around her.

A good all-around student, Serena devours novels and wants to do an English degree in a small university, but her housewife mother, in an uncharacteristic fit of feminism, tells her she has a chance of making something of herself by going to Cambridge and doing “maths.”