The Captain’s Table is Brian Thompson’s second foray into Bella Wallis’ life and loves. The first, The Widow’s Secret, is both a portrait of the danger and adventure to be found in Victorian England and a representation of the struggles a writer faces when confronted with real life and a need to create.

Thompson’s focus is on Bella Wallis, an attractive, intelligent, and witty widow who makes her living (secretly) as Henry Ellis Margam, sensational novelist extraordinaire. She survived her first outing, barely, and is now searching about her for a new thread to weave into a novel. Although the plot of the mystery is, almost, typical (there is a damsel in distress, an eccentric inventor, and a writer-turned-detective), Thompson’s characters take what could be a series of tired and worn clichés and turn them upside down to reveal a writer struggling to deal with the real world, a damsel whose distress is at least partially due to her own choices, and an inventor whose eccentricity does not prevent him from being a loyal and brave friend.

All of this reversal and oddity is due entirely to Bella. As a character, she is superbly drawn. She may be headstrong and lovely, but she is also occasionally quite wrong, cowardly, and unwilling to deal with the situations she finds while following the thread of her story. Bella really struggles with her need to see and, more importantly, reveal the darker sides of humanity. She transforms and romanticizes the reality in her writing, but she cannot escape it, and she is forced, frequently, to question whether the story she creates is worth the danger that she and her cohorts encounter.

This time Bella has found an especially terrifying foe. Robert Judd storms and threatens, blusters and browbeats. And, though he is clothed in new suits and well-made boots, he is, as Bella knows, dangerous. Robert Judd also threatens the love of William Kennett, beautiful Mary Skillane, and it is this threat that draws Bella and her allies deeper into the world that Judd inhabits. It is a world of knives and blackmail, a world where human life is thought cheap and expendable. It is a world Bella does not easily understand or wish to. Bella, and her alter-ego Margam, both prefer:

a monogrammed handkerchief found under the bed; or a cache of love letters hidden in the boathouse. Anything else was utter madness. There was enough folly in a misplaced lock of hair to furnish any novel with its plot.

But, Bella’s devotion to the story and her friends propels her onward. Soon, she is on the trail of Robert Judd and has begun to wonder about Mary’s father, William Skillane, a treasure trove of pearls, and dark secrets that are worth the life of a young girl. It is clear that Judd has some hold over Skillane and that he is willing to use extreme violence to get his way. Through all of these threats, Bella fights to reconcile the love she feels for Phillip Westland with her compulsion to seek out the darkness and terror that lurk underneath even the cultured parts of Victorian England.

Bella is never alone on her quests. Although the help from Margam may be of the fictional kind, Bella has Phillip, his friend (and Mary’s love) William Kennett, and a host of other supporting cast. This group includes one of the most brazen, and original, sidekicks ever created: Captain Quigley. Quigley, in the best tradition of sensational fiction, swashbuckles his way through the pages, firing off guns, “convincing” rogues to spill their secrets, and providing Bella with the space and equipment she needs to survive her dual life. He, more than anyone else, understands Bella’s need to write and reveal.

In the end, Bella still holds Margam safe in her heart, although she knows that he places her in danger and strains her relationships with those she holds dear. She still must write and describe her:

uneasy sense of how the world really was—that was to say, how reason (and justice) was balanced precariously over an abyss. The trick was not to prate nor wring the hands but to find the story that might illustrate the metaphor.

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