Upon returning to New-York (it's 1775) from London to take over his late father's medical practice, John Tonneman, a descendant of Pieter's (The Dutchman, 1992), is appointed coroner and soon runs afoul of a serial killer who fancies beheading redheaded slatterns and, for a change of pace, decapitates John's graying housekeeper. The search for the murderer intertwines with an attempt to poison General Washington (by doctoring his pease soup at Fraunces Tavern), and John--abetted by a mere slip of a girl who yearns for her own medical practice, as well as by a black man and a disgraced watchman--accosts the murderer/would-be assassin just as he's being hanged on charges of counterfeiting. Loosely based on the Hickey Plot and rendered with all the verisimilitude of a factoid TV reenactment. Simplistic character motivation and political explanation make this second in a series- -by pseudonymous coauthors Martin and Annette Meyers (the Patrick Hardy and Smith & Wetzon mysteries, respectively)--better suited to a YA audience.
