Gallic Books snaps up third in Bridget Walsh’s Variety Palace Mysteries series

Gallic Books has landed The Spirit Guide, the latest novel in Bridget Walsh’s Variety Palace Mysteries series.

Managing director Joe Harper acquired world English language rights to the novel from Isobel Dixon at Blake Friedmann Literary Agency, and the book will be published in spring 2025.

The first book in the Victorian-set crime series, The Tumbling Girl (Gallic Books), won the UEA Little, Brown Award for Crime Fiction in 2019, while the second, The Innocents, will be published in April this year, also by Gallic. “The Spirit Guide returns to the Victorian London that served as a backdrop to Walsh’s previous two titles,” the synopsis says. “It’s 1879, and an investigation into two mysterious deaths leads detective duo Minnie Ward and Albert Easterbrook to the Spirit Sisterhood, a female-only spiritualist group purporting to help its members commune with deceased loved ones.

“Minnie isn’t buying it. Going undercover at the organisation’s countryside house, she finds herself drawn into a strange but alluring world of seances and spirits. But she is isolated from Albert and everyone she loves, and her situation becomes more dangerous by the hour.”

Harper commented: “We are very proud to publish Bridget, and are delighted to have the opportunity to bring The Spirit Guide – an absolutely brilliant crime novel – to existing fans of the Variety Palace Mysteries, and new readers, around the world.”

Walsh added: “Working with Gallic on the first two Variety Palace Mysteries has been a real joy. I’m delighted that the next episode in Minnie and Albert’s adventures will remain in such very capable hands.”