Showing Octopus: Octavius Guy and the Case of the Throttled Tragedienne (Send for Octavius Guy Book 2) by Michael Gallagher

Gooseberry, the fourteen-year-old Victorian boy detective, is having his fair share of problems. Not only must he juggle the task of being Mr Bruff’s newly-appointed chief investigator with the unwanted responsibility of managing London’s entire criminal underclass, he also has to decide whether a drunken wretch of a man—who turns up on his doorstep claiming to be his father—is who he says he is.
But when the leading actress dies in mysterious circumstances on stage during a performance of The Duchess of Malfi at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Gooseberry feels duty-bound to investigate. It is, after all, a great deal more exciting than the last case he was assigned to: the tracking down of a rich old lady’s errant cat!
Join Octavius and his ragtag bunch of friends on their latest adventure, a revenge tragedy (of sorts) in (roughly—very roughly) three acts.