Welcome to Seraphine Marrow’s Bloomsbury studio, where the brushes stand in jam jars, the kettle is always hot, and Inspector Harrow is pretending he didn’t come for the biscuits. I’ve pulled up a chair to interview London’s most unlikely investigative team.
Miss Marrow, you’re a portrait artist. How does a painter end up helping Scotland Yard?
Seraphine: I paint the departed, so families have a likeness to keep. But when I paint a victim, I don’t only see a face. I see their final moments through their own eyes. It isn’t a gift one asks for, and it isn’t always kind. But it means the dead can tell me things no one else can hear.
Inspector Harrow, how did you take to that?
Lucien: I was a skeptic. I deal in evidence: scuff marks, chemical residues, witnesses who can be cross-examined. Miss Marrow deals in brushstrokes. (checks pocket watch) I have since expanded my definition of evidence.
Seraphine: He means he was proven wrong. Repeatedly.
Lucien: I said what I meant.
What’s the hardest part of your job, Inspector?
Lucien: Society’s finest close ranks beautifully. Drawing rooms keep secrets better than any vault at the Yard. And my notes are in a private shorthand no one else can read, which would be an advantage if Constable Oakes didn’t insist on signing his own with a flourish.
Oakes: Paperwork should have style. Besides, I’m the one who gets the confessions and knows a proper right hook. I practice the Noble Art on Thursdays, you know.
Seraphine: Letting go of what I’ve seen. Some portraits stay with me long after the paint dries. Mrs. Clove helps in her way.
Mrs. Clove (arriving with a tray, her eyes on Lucien’s boots): She helps by reminding people that wet boots ruin a good floor, whatever crimes they’ve been solving.
Lucien: I wiped them.
Mrs. Clove: You looked at the mat, Inspector. That is not wiping. (sets down the tray with the precision of a woman who has been reading people since before Seraphine was born, and glances between the two of them) Mm.
Seraphine: Mrs. Clove, that’s enough.
Mrs. Clove: I said nothing, miss. (exits, smiling)
Lucien, what’s one thing you admire about Seraphine?
Lucien: (long silence, adjusts cuffs) She notices what others look past. People, places, moments. She sees all of it.
Seraphine: That was suspiciously nice.
Lucien: I’d like to move on.
Let’s bring in the third member of the team. Rook, what’s your role in all this?
Rook is a 90-pound brindle collie-mastiff mix with amber eyes and one ear that stands up while the other has given up entirely. He has strong opinions.
Seraphine: Rook is my companion, my alarm system, and my toughest critic. He survived the London alleys, and he can sense the cruelty a room has held before the door even opens. If he won’t cross a threshold, I listen.
Lucien: He has also eaten two of my gloves.
Seraphine: Evidence of his good taste.
Oakes: He once let me carry him up a flooded ladder, sir. Never a complaint.
Lucien: He had no choice. You’d already picked him up.
Oakes: And then he muddied my new coat. A magnificent coat.
Rook: (wags tail, steals a biscuit)
Last question for all of you: what should readers expect from the series?
Seraphine: Gaslit streets, secrets behind gilded frames, and the sense that the dead are never quite finished speaking.
Lucien: Murders that don’t solve themselves, and a partner who insists on painting the evidence.
Oakes: Excellent tea, and at least one right hook!
Mrs. Clove (from the hallway): And clean floors!
Rook: (barks, once)
Seraphine: He says you’ll want to keep the lamps lit.
Meet them in The Shadow in the Mirror, Book 1 of the Harrow & Marrow series. Enter the Goodreads giveaway for a chance to win one of 10 signed paperbacks, running through November 15th!
Want to learn more about The Shadow in the Mirror?
A portrait artist whose brushstrokes reveal murder, a skeptical inspector who can’t explain what she knows, and a killer using mirrors as instruments of death — a gothic paranormal mystery set in Victorian London’s most shadowed corners, where the line between vision and madness is razor thin.
Her paintings show the truth. Someone doesn’t want it to stay on canvas.
When portrait artist Seraphine Marrow paints a murdered woman, she discovers something impossible: her art reveals her subjects’ final moments. Each brushstroke brings visions she cannot explain, and the more she paints, the harder it becomes to separate memory from madness. Desperate to keep her ability hidden, she avoids the authorities — until one painting exposes a killer who has made mirrors into weapons.
Inspector Lucien Harrow trusts evidence, not visions. But when a string of strange deaths defies all logic, he’s forced to follow the only lead that makes sense: Seraphine Marrow. Her knowledge of the victims is too precise to ignore — and too dangerous to dismiss.
As they descend into London’s hidden laboratories, Seraphine’s visions grow stronger and more demanding. The mirrors at the center of the murders are not merely surfaces — they are something far more deliberate, and each revelation pulls her closer to their grasp. With the body count rising and the line between truth and illusion blurring, Seraphine and Lucien must learn to trust each other before a killer obsessed with immortality claims them both as its next victims.
The Shadow in the Mirror is a dark, atmospheric gothic paranormal mystery set in Victorian London’s most treacherous corners — tightly plotted, relentlessly tense, and haunted by the question of how much truth a mirror can hold.
Perfect for readers who love:
– Dark, atmospheric gothic mysteries
– A gifted artist with an eye for what cannot be seen
– A skeptical inspector with a penchant for the facts
– Foggy Victorian London with streets heavy with paranormal dread
Get to know Kari Lee Townsend:
Kari Lee Townsend is a National Bestselling Author of mysteries & a tween superhero series. She also writes romance and women’s fiction as Kari Lee Harmon. With a background in English education, she’s now a full-time writer, wife to her own superhero, mom of three sons, one darling diva, one daughter-in-law & two lovable fur babies. These days you’ll find her walking her dogs or hard at work on her next story, living a blessed life.
You can follow Kari’s updates on her website, or on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or Bookbub. To hear from Kari via her reader newsletters, sign up here.
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