THE TWISTED ROAD

Early-20th-century San Francisco is roiled by a streetcar workers’ strike and a related murder in Michaels’ mystery novel.

Jonathan Henry Perris left a successful law practice in England for the excitement of San Francisco, a city racing to rebuild after the disastrous destruction of the 1906 earthquake. He has opened a small law practice, Jonathan Perris and Associates, and staffed it with two fresh-out-of-law-school attorneys, Cordelia Hammersmith and Oliver Bean; Dove Rebane, a private investigator; and office manager Althea. Of late, Jonathan has been dating the beautiful Austrian heiress Magdalena (Lena) von Mendelssohn, who, he learns, is a woman of many secrets (“She and Jonathan had struck up a conversation and discovered they did indeed have some overlapping interests, not the least of which was a healthy physical attraction to one another”). In the early-morning hours following Jonathan and Lena’s evening of theater and dinner, the police come to Jonathan’s house and arrest him for Lena’s brutal murder—her body has been discovered on the floor of an infamous bordello, with Jonathan’s card and a ticket stub found in her pocket. Meanwhile, a trial involving a murder that took place during a riot by striking streetcar workers has just concluded with the conviction of a young man, Emmett Barnes; Jonathan’s firm is hired to handle Emmett’s appeal. As the team investigates, they find the two cases beginning to overlap in unexpected ways. Michaels’ action-packed mystery boasts a wealth of back stories, possible suspects, and potential motives. The author has assembled a rogue’s gallery of blackmailers, corrupt politicians, artistic socialists (who call themselves “the Incendiaries”), and jealous lovers. Cordelia emerges as a formidable protagonist, and Jonathan has a back story that's only partially revealed, paving the way for a potentially intriguing sequel. Several unexpected turns of the plot and a voluminous list of characters threaten to make the narrative unwieldy, but it is held together by solidly composed prose, a bit of humor, and a sprinkling of historical tidbits.

A sturdy series opener, with two engaging central protagonists and a few surprises.