As usual, Cleverly (The Blood Royal, 2011, etc.) neatly captures the style and feeling of the period between the world wars...
A desperate plea for help from a schoolboy sucks Scotland Yard Detective Joe Sandilands into a case that could end his career.
Jackie Drummond’s mother had once used Joe in an attempt to conceive, so there’s a chance that young Jackie could be Joe’s son. Because his parents live in colonial India, Jackie attends St. Magnus, a Sussex boarding school. When a schoolmaster who was about to give him a beating is murdered, Jackie runs off to London, where “Uncle Joe” takes him in and prepares to return him, even though all is far from normal back at school. Before they leave, Joe is called into a meeting with high government officials who give him the vague assignment of investigating St. Magnus. Joe takes along Dorcas Joliffe, a tough young family friend whose psychology degree will turn out to be an asset. Over the years, a number of troublesome boys have left St. Magnus school and have never taken up their rightful place in life. The latest goes missing under the noses of Joe, Dorcas and Mr. Gosling, an MI5 agent posing as a teacher. Joe, Dorcas and Gosling end up investigating what turns out to be a troubling case indeed. Too many people connected with the school over the years have had an interest in eugenics and believe only the best and brightest should be allowed to breed. The shadow of Nazi Germany looms large over the case, which becomes more horrific with every new discovery.
As usual, Cleverly (The Blood Royal, 2011, etc.) neatly captures the style and feeling of the period between the world wars and provides plenty of mystery, suspense and danger.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61695-154-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
A high-country Presumed Innocent that moves like greased lightning. First of a welcome new series, though it’s hard to...
Rookie Twelve Sleep County Game Warden Joe Pickett’s not much of a shot, and he’s been looking like a goat ever since poacher Ote Keeley got the drop on him with his own gun during a routine arrest. But at least he’s doing better than Ote, who’s turned up dead on the woodpile outside Joe’s house. Joe’s search in Crazy Woman Creek canyon for the two outfitters and guides Ote was most recently partnered with ends happily, though violently, and suddenly Joe is the man of the hour. Longtime County Sheriff Bud Barnum nervously asks Joe’s assurance that he’s not going to support neighboring game warden Wacey Hedeman’s challenge in the upcoming election; trophy wife Aimee Kensinger, who really likes men in uniforms, invites Joe’s family to housesit her palatial digs for three weeks; and wily Vern Dunnegan, Joe’s predecessor, wants Joe to join him in pulling down big bucks from InterWest resources, the fat-cat corporation for whose gas pipeline Vern’s lining up local support. All this good news is only a front, of course, for a monstrous assault on Joe’s livelihood, his integrity, and his family—and incidentally on an inoffensive species long assumed extinct. In response, Joe promises one of the bad guys that “things are going to get real western,” and that’s exactly what happens in the satisfyingly action-filled climax.
A high-country Presumed Innocent that moves like greased lightning. First of a welcome new series, though it’s hard to imagine tourism-marketing exec Box topping his debut.Pub Date: July 9, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14748-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
PERSPECTIVES
Middling for this fine series, which automatically makes it one of the season’s highlights.
Fired from his job as Game and Fish Warden after wrapping up his colorful sixth case (In Plain Sight, 2006), Joe Pickett returns to nab the perpetrator of the perfect crime.
According to his own confession, small-time lawyer Clay McCann, feeling bullied and insulted by four campers he encountered in Yellowstone Park, shot them dead. A ingenious technicality he’s discovered, however, prevents him from being tried and convicted. Wyoming Governor Spencer Rulon, a former prosecutor, can only slap McCann’s wrist, but he’s determined to figure out what Rick Hoening, one of the victims, meant by an email that hinted at secrets that could have a major impact on the state’s financial health. So he asks Joe, now working as foreman at his father-in-law’s ranch, to poke around the park while maintaining full deniability for the Governor. The situation stinks, but Joe’s so eager to get away from his wife’s poisonous mother and go back to his old job that he agrees, and in short order there’s a spate of new killings to deal with—some committed by McCann, some not. As usual, there’s little mystery about which of the sketchy suspects is behind the skullduggery. But, as usual, the central situation is so strong, the continuing characters so appealing and the spectacular landscape so lovingly evoked that it doesn’t matter.
Middling for this fine series, which automatically makes it one of the season’s highlights.Pub Date: May 10, 2007
ISBN: 0-399-15427-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
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