The atmosphere is rich and peaty, but the pace is glacial—nearly another century passes before the plot begins to...
Detective Inspector Gemma James (And Justice There Is None, 2002, etc.) is cast in some unaccustomed roles—dupe and murder suspect—when she goes to Scotland for a cooking class.
Gemma doesn’t know what’s really cooking. Her friend and former landlady, psychologist Hazel Cavendish, is less interested in picking up culinary expertise from chef John Innes than in rekindling her ancient romance with local distiller Donald Brodie. Not even Hazel knows that Donald’s also being pursued by shopgirl Alison Grant, who’s pursued in turn (in a neat completion of Crombie’s social stratification) by stable owner Callum MacGillivray. The situation is obviously explosive, and when John is killed, the only surprise is that it took so long. As the suspects stand around pointing their fingers at each other—at one point somebody suggests they must all be in it together—DCI Alun Ross gets pointedly interested in Hazel, and even in Hazel’s husband Tim, who seemed to be safely tucked away back in London. Meanwhile, Gemma’s lover and housemate, Supt. Duncan Kincaid, is threatened with the loss of his late wife’s son in a custody suit. For good measure, there’s also a series of flashbacks to a pivotal episode in the distillery’s history a hundred years ago.
The atmosphere is rich and peaty, but the pace is glacial—nearly another century passes before the plot begins to thicken—and neither Gemma nor Kincaid shines as a detective this time.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-052523-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
Science and romance meet in a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game.
A Regency lady with a hidden past joins forces with an irritable aristocrat to solve a dastardly series of crimes.
That waspish illustrator using the name A.J. Quill is really Lady Charlotte Sloan, cast off by her family for marrying her drawing master. She’s worked on several cases with the Earl of Wrexford (Murder at Half Moon Gate, 2018, etc.), but none has tested her skills or her heart as much as the one involving her cousin Cedric, Lord Chittenden, and his twin brother, Nicholas. The twins were Charlotte’s dearest childhood companions, and she’s devastated when Cedric is brutally murdered and Nicholas is arrested. The cousins were interested in scientific research, so Charlotte searches for clues among their peers. Hawk and Raven, two street urchins she’s raising as gentlemen, help her in other ways. And Wrexford bribes his way into the prison housing Nicholas, who drops hints about the Eos Society and Cedric’s rivalries over lovely Lady Julianna Aldrich, whose wealthy guardian encourages her intellectual interests. Although the theory that electricity can be used to raise the dead has largely been disproven, Cedric has continued to experiment with the voltaic pile. A particularly promising clue is the sighting of a person with a distinctive hat and cloak at recent crime scenes. Realizing that the killer is most likely a member of the upper crust, Charlotte makes the difficult decision to reveal herself as Lady Charlotte in order to meet more of her cousin’s friends. Her burgeoning awareness of her love for Wrexford is just one of many unpredictable complications in the search for a clever and ruthless killer.
Science and romance meet in a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2281-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Morris, author of the Porfiry Petrovich series (The Cleansing Flames, 2011, etc.), kicks off this promising new series by...
A bold and twisted killer challenges one of New Scotland Yard's most brilliant young detectives.
March, 1914. A beautiful young rent boy named Jimmy accepts a carriage ride from a top-hatted toff despite a few details about the man he finds worrisome. The next morning, DI Silas Quinn is called to investigate a bizarre murder on the London Docks. Quinn, dubbed "Quick-fire Quinn" by the Daily Clarion, is meticulous but also a bit of a maverick. His two stolid sergeants, Inchball and Macadam, pose quite a contrast to Quinn, who started as a medical student but dropped out after his beloved doctor father committed suicide. Quinn is as socially awkward as he is professionally accomplished. He lives in a boardinghouse, devotes himself entirely to his work and is unable to converse easily on even the most casual topics. This case gives him plenty of reason to concentrate his attention. The throat of the victim was slit, and all of the blood drained from the body. His file at the local police station bears the designation, "Unidentified Sodomite." Starting from a beautiful cigarette case found on the body, Quinn probes the seamy London subculture in which wealthy and influential men buy the sexual favors of disadvantaged youth.
Morris, author of the Porfiry Petrovich series (The Cleansing Flames, 2011, etc.), kicks off this promising new series by focusing as much on the conflicted and vulnerable character of Quinn as on the crime itself. Though his prose is often too pedestrian for the sinister complexity of his tale, his sense of the historical moment is strong.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-78029-025-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Creme de la Crime
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
