THE WHITE CROW

In a darkened room in a house on Victorian Boston’s Lime Street, Caroline Ames, wistfully hoping to contact the mother who has passed over, clasps the hands of Dr. John MacKenzie, the shy beau who sits to her right, and of philanthropist Theophilus Clay on her left as she listens to medium Evangeline Sidgwick’s “control” Roland as he interprets messages from the spirit world. When the séance ends, Clay is dead; the man to his left, Mr. Jones, has scampered away; and a bit of automatic writing on the tablet in front of Mrs. Sidgwick says “Ames next.” At the urging of Mrs. Sidgwick’s protector, a member of one of his clubs, Caroline’s brother Addison makes inquiries that lead him to Harvard scholar William James and, less pleasantly, to Chester Snell, the paroled con artist who caused the ruination and death of Ames’s father ten years before. When Jones is found dead, the tattoo on his back turns out to be identical to a decoration sported by Mrs. Sidgwick. There are more séances, as well as a kidnapping, an attempt on Caroline’s life, some life-threatening thrusts with an épée, and several important messages conveyed on that newfangled invention the telephone before all becomes clear—except, perhaps, whether Mrs. Sidgwick can really commune with the departed, dear and otherwise.

Peale wraps up her Ames trilogy (The Death of Colonel Mann, 2000; Murder at Bertram’s Bower, 2001) with enough plot recaps, dreary romantic snippets, and coincidences to clog up Boston Harbor.