“If Two Are Dead” is the second book in a murder mystery series from Renton, Washington, author Jeanne Matthews.

This summer, Renton, Washington, author Jeanne Matthews introduces the second book in her Garnick & Paschal mystery series, set in the post-Civil War era. This sequel to “Devil by the Tail” is called “If Two Are Dead.”

In the space of 24 hours, two unsavory cases land in the laps of private investigator Quinn Paschal and her partner in business and love, former Confederate POW Gabriel Garnick.

One involves grave robbers, the putrefying corpse of a young woman, and Chicago’s medical establishment.

The other involves the theft of a diary belonging to none other than Charles Dickens. The English literary luminary is about to launch his much-ballyhooed American reading tour, but he fears his reputation will be tarnished if the diary’s intimate contents are revealed.

This week’s book

“If Two Are Dead” by Jeanne Matthews

DeGress Books — 316 pp — $18.95

Beginning with a stakeout in a cemetery, Matthews heaps this story with ghoulish details – hauling around a dead body, which is what the intrepid investigators have to resort to early on, is no easy feat. Graphic hospital procedures, murders, and even an impaling extend the squeamish quotient.

There are assorted other unscrupulous and illegal acts, as well: extramarital affairs, cadaver swaps, fraud, extortion, assault and battery.

The protagonists are not spared the abuse. Garnick gets clocked in the face. At one point, Paschal is incarcerated in a hideous jail cell. Another time she is attacked and thrown into an offal-clogged river.

And the author throws in red herrings aplenty. A hermit holds a secret. Widows with sad stories have hidden agendas. In Chicago’s emerging medical profession, there are still quack practitioners as well as honest blunders, but it turns out that doctors of any stripe are willing to resort to desperate measures to uphold their reputations.

And there are always opportunists lurking on the fringes, willing to carry out unsavory tasks if the pay is good enough.

With these and so many more, fully the first half of this book is a befuddling jumble of names and schemes.

It’s almost enough to make a reader want to throw in the towel, but Garnick and Paschal are made of sterner stuff. Buoyed by “brain juice” (coffee) and some new cocaine lozenges Paschal nicked from a hospital cart after she was fished out of the aforementioned river and treated for broken ribs, the pair works relentlessly against the clock and in the midst of stormy late-November weather to untangle the story threads and loose ends of these two cases.

Matthews richly seasons this story with historical details, from coutil corsets to favored 19th-century vittles – fried oysters or mallard duck and turnips, anyone?

The dialogue is peppered as well with exclamations from that era: “Murderation!” – “cold as blue flugens” — “kicked in the clock weights” and many more.

Perhaps in homage to Dickens’ style of writing, Matthews creates an intricately layered tale of haves, have-nots, avarice and decency — although her portrayal of Dickens himself is not at all flattering.

“If Two Are Dead” is a twisty tale that demands the patience of readers, but pays off in the end.