A CHAPEL OF THIEVES

This belated sequel to I Tell a Lie Every So Often (1974, reissued in 2001) takes young Henry Desant from mid-19th-century St. Louis all the way to Paris on a bid to rescue his naïve big brother from a gang of pickpockets and second-story men. Refused the flighty hand of Clemmy Burke, Clayton Desant suddenly announces a vocation to preach to the “great sinners” of France—“I will be known far and wide as The Tonsils of the Lord,” he declaims. As Henry quickly figures out from Clayton’s letter home, however, his brother’s rented chapel has become a front for a sinister band of crooks led by one “Deacon George.” What can Henry do but pull his savings from the bank, board a riverboat for New Orleans, and ship out for Paris, in hopes of persuading the scales to fall from Clayton’s eyes? It’s an adventure-laden trip; before his ultimately successful efforts to steer his brother back into Clemmy’s grip, Henry encounters several characters either dangerous or dead (or both), the great Victor Hugo, the inside of a jail, and, most important, the beautiful, elegant Cécile Gelineau, who, along with her kind brother Doctor Alexandre Gelineau, changes his life. But the tale starts more strongly than it finishes, and Henry tells it with such laconic, deadpan formality that less analytical readers may miss the fact that it’s supposed to be comical. For a more compelling story, with a similar setting, try Kathleen Karr’s Skullduggery (2000). (Fiction. 12-15)