Author: Sally Smith
A Case of Life and Limb is the second book in the Trials of Gabriel Ward series by Sally Smith. I wrote about the first book already (see here). In this second book, the story starts on Christmas Eve 1901 in London’s Inner Temple when a new case befalls Sir Gabriel Ward, KC, because someone is sending body parts with wordplay messages to senior members of the Inner Temple. Working again with Constable Wrigh, Ward engages in investigating this gruesome practice while also working on his own case of a music hall performer, Topsy Tillotson, who sued national tabloid newspapers The Nation’s Voice for defamation of character. As with the first book, the two cases come together eventually.
The second book again describes Edwardian legal culture, institutional ritual, murder mystery, and social rules and etiquette, tackling class division in an Edwardian society. The latter is also sometimes packed in humor, particularly in the context of Detective Hughes and Constable Wright simply referring to the upper class as nobs without always realizing they are speaking to Sir Gabriel Ward, who is also part of that class. However, this is where Ward’s character is subtly portrayed as different because Ward often contemplates class differences, but it is also obvious that he is not a snob or the one to endorse class division.
The social class angle is generally good in this book (and the first one) because Smith does not write about social class in the context of rich vs poor but mainly in the context of who knows how to move and behave inside elite institutional spaces. So, the Inner Temple is not just a legal setting or an institutional setting; it is also a classed world with its own language, rituals, hierarchies, dress, manners, and assumptions about who belongs. The mystery unfolds inside a professional environment, but one where authority is not legal but social; people know the codes of the place, and that makes them credible. Class, thus, appears through recognition because Ward understands how to communicate and behave in the Inner Temple, but police officers from the City of London do not always know that, so they can be judged based on how they speak, behave, and dress.
What I also liked here is the case of the performer and the newspaper’s libel case, because this gave the novel a valuable class contrast. The Inner Temple represents elite professional authority, while the music hall represents popular entertainment, visibility, and performance. The newspapers represent mass circulation, scandal, and power, but are seen as populist and as lower by the Inner Temple because of their mass appeal. Editor and journalist in this book are perceived as working class because of what they publish and do, but in the UK, all research shows that journalists are mainly middle class, which I thought was interesting because in some von Arnim’s novels, I saw a negative view of middle classes as well, so the question that opens to me is to what extent the upper classes accept middle classes?
Another enjoyable read. There is a third book in this series getting published in January 2027, which I will pre-order, and I will look forward to having the new book land on my Kindle. Or, in words I imagine Sir Gabriel Ward would use, ‘I shall look forward to that delightful day.’
Thank you for reading!