Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders

Author/Guide: Kate Griffin

Why a Booktrail?

1880: Dancing girls are going missing from ‘Paradise’ that’s Limehouse in London to you

ISBN: 978-0571302697
Genre: Cosy crime, Historical

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What you need to know before your trail

Paradise is the more well known name for the criminal manor owned by the ferocious Lady Ginger. When her dancing girls start to go missing, she wants to know why and Kitty, the 17 year old music hall seamstress is suddenly drawn into the whole affair. She and her stagehand friend Lucca are the unlikely team to start investigating just what is going on and unravel the truth.

Kitty may have courage and common sense and Lucca has the intelligence to match but are they a force to be reckoned with as far as the monster lurking in the shadows is concerned? From the gin-fuelled halls and doss houses of the East End to the champagne-fuelled galleries of the West End, this is going to be one trail that does not have the promise of treasure at the end

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Travel Guide

If you are heading out on a tour of Victorian London and to experience the sweat and smells of the London’sEast End pubs and streets to the West End theatres andMusical Halls then this is the booktrail for you.

The Gaudy (Inspired in part by Wilton’s Music Hall)

Kitty Peck works with the Lady at the aptly named Gaudy where she cleans up, helps with the costumes and assists the performers. She is the eyes of the Gaudy and the ears too. She can see everything in the all and what a lot the Gaudy has on display:

“The Gaudy wasn’t really a first rank hall but it still had a dozen or so boxes for the use of private parties and what you might call gentlemen patrons. A couple of them already had their curtains drawn.”

The World of theatre and music hall

This is a theatre where the orchestra starts but the sound that comes out is the noise of the punters, where the wings are a peace offering, where Dismal Jimmy tells jokes and stories and where if the punters see ‘tough old game’ on the stage they’ll shout instead for ‘fresh meat.’

The sights and sounds of the music hall era , as well as the smells and the fine details of the life and rimes is exquisite in its detail. The bawdy songs, the art of pick pocketing, the brash costumes and the daring costumes of Kitty, the ‘Limehouse linnet’ who nights defies gravity draws a picture of an evocative world or detail, Victorian vice and so much more.

Limehouse

Kitty’s humble beginnings and a world away from where she is now.when on the stage:

“Over at Limehouse you were lucky to see a tine bath and a bar of Wright’s soap”

The sights and sounds of the music hall era , as well as the smells and the fine details of the life and rimes is exquisite in its detail. The bawdy songs, the art of pick pocketing, the brash costumes and the daring costumes of Kitty, the ‘Limehouse linnet’ who nights defies gravity draws a picture of an evocative world or detail, Victorian vice and so much more.