The Shadow in the North (1986) is a book by the English author Philip Pullman. It was originally published as The Shadow in the Plate.
Plot
This second Sally Lockhart mystery takes place in late 1878, six years after the events of The Ruby in the Smoke. A Miss Walsh walks into the offices of Sally Lockhart's office (Sally is now working as a financial consultant) about some poor business advice Sally gave her; as a result Miss Walsh has lost her life savings. Sally vows to get the money back and investigate Anglo-Baltic, the company Miss Walsh lost all her money from. We also learn that Sally has a huge but lovable black dog called Chaka and that Frederick Garland (Sally's friend from The Ruby in the Smoke) is in love with Sally but that she is unsure of her feelings and so continuously refuses to decide on whether to marry him. Sally's friend Jim Taylor (now working as a stagehand in a local theatre) helps stage magician Alistair Mackinnon escape two men Mackinnon is certain plan to kill him. Jim takes Mackinnon to Frederick and Frederick's uncle Webster at their photography shop/private investigations office in Burton Street where Mackinnon proves to Jim, Webster and Frederick that he has spiritual abilities (he can see things having to do with an object by touching it) and tells them of a murder he saw by touching a man's cigar case. Mackinnon tells them that he believes that the man knows that he (Mackinnon) knows about the murder, and is therefore terrified for his life. Jim and Frederick go to a spiritualist seance as part of their work as private detectives. The seance involves the table shaking from side to side and objects being thrown across the room; the medium (a Mrs. Nellie Budd) also has trance during which she says things that connect to a mysterious business tied up to Anglo-Baltic called North Star. Frederick manages to get a photograph of Nellie's arms during the seance. Later, Frederick tells Sally what he has learnt. She tells him what she knows about the former owner of Anglo-Baltic and current owner of North Star, Axel Bellmann. Sally suspects that Bellman has manufactured Anglo-Baltic's collapse to fund North Star; she believes him to be very vicious.