The pursuers are also the pursued in this tale of vulnerable children, society murders and an irascible detective

A companion to Paraic O’Donnell’s’s 2018 gothic mystery The House on Vesper Sands, The Naming of the Birds unfolds with rising tension and expert pacing.

The novel opens in 1872 at a seemingly remote cluster of buildings where reprehensible adults inflict secrets and sadism on children who have survived a fire. The adults withhold the children’s original names, and call them after birds. Nightingale’s watchfulness is notable among her peers. She understands the children’s situation: “They are nothing now, and they are nowhere.”