THE FRENCH PAYMASTER

In this ghostly tale set during the Revolutionary War, two officers—one colonial and one French—search for a missing French paymaster.

In 1781, at the height of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Army relies heavily on infusions of gold from their French ally. Consequently, the disappearance of French paymaster Rene Garneau is a grave matter—in his absence, regiments in Albany have gone weeks without pay. George Washington dispatches Gen. Philip Schuyler and Vicomte Charles Dumas to track him and the money he was conveying somewhere between the Connecticut valley and the border of New York. The pair travels to the Hosford Stand in Canton, a tavern, the last place he was known to visit, and encounters a strange cast of characters, each seemingly harboring secrets, and many, including the Stand’s owner, Duncan Case, in desperate need of funds. There are also those who are unabashedly loyal to the crown or bitterly resentful of the involuntary contributions collected for the war effort. In other words, many have reason to murder Garneau. LaBella weaves old legend into a murder mystery, one based on Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820). Schuyler discovers that some believe Garneau was murdered and now vengefully haunts Canton, riding his horse like a spectral apparition. This is a light, intricate, and unpredictable tale; the mystery is more evocative of Agatha Christie than Irving. The layered characterization adds to the fun, with an especially memorable Dumas. He often behaves in the “manner of a fop,” displaying a lack of gravity that initially troubles Schuyler, but this turns out to be a crafty act that conceals his remarkable intelligence. Unfortunately, the prose can be clumsy (“But oh, what a malicious crew we may have here. Perhaps the shadows reveal their true natures, in a way the daylight would never do”). Despite that distraction, the novel remains thoroughly entertaining—somehow both creepy and lighthearted.

Lackluster writing doesn’t derail this delightful murder mystery.