Murder on Waverly Place by Victoria Thompson

This book is part of a series called Gaslight Mysteries. The main character, Sarah Brandt , is a midwife in 19th century New York City. I like historical mysteries, especially when they are about the history of a place I am familiar with. Despite a fascination with the city that started when I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as a young girl, I wasn't personally familiar with it until my daughter Marina started attending NYU in 2002. I had visited the city before that, but hadn't spent much time there.

Anyway, back to the book. There are a lot of pluses with this series, as the stories are interesting and well plotted, there are characters you can't help but care about, and the atmosphere is rich and convincing. The one minus is that this series features a love/hate relationship between Sarah and a policeman. This relationship has been developing since the first book, but hasn't really made much progress. It's one of those situations where you want SOMETHING to be resolved. The attraction is fought by both Sarah and the policeman, and plays too large a part in many of the books. This particular book was less annoying in that while it doesn't resolve at all, it also isn't a focus, or even mentioned much. Short of having them get together, moving the whole mess into the background is a welcome change.