An international murder mystery, largely set in London in 1941, that also dramatizes the withering impact of World War II on Europe.
British Capt. Simon Arbuthnot is mortally wounded in Crete when his unit is strafed by German warplanes. As he takes his last breath, he hands a bloody envelope to Lt. Edgar Powell and asks him to ensure its safe delivery. However, bad handwriting and bloodstains obscure the name of the addressee, leaving Powell with a mystery that he feels bound by honor to solve. He turns to DCI Frank Merlin, an old friend, for help. Meanwhile, Arbuthnot’s son and heir, Philip, slowly learns that his father’s business interests were as mysterious as they were vast and potentially the result of unsavory dealings. Merlin goes on to investigate the death of a young woman found in a gruesome condition in a London hotel room. She’s the victim of an illegal abortion gone wrong, and Merlin is quickly able to establish that the physician who botched the procedure is Armand de Metz, a once-prominent surgeon who fled his native France during the Nazi occupation. The doctor is soon found murdered, apparently by a professional killer. Further complicating matters, de Metz was evidently in touch with MI5 agents, promising to deliver information relevant to the war effort, and the deceased girl turns out to have been under suspicion due to her active support of the Irish Republican Army. This is the third installment in author Ellis’ (Stalin’s Gold, 2014, etc.) DCI Frank Merlin series, which not only brings back the titular detective, but also some familiar themes: the danger posed to London by German bombing campaigns, the underground French Resistance to both German occupation and a collaborationist Vichy government, and the moral degradation of a city that lives under the shadow of death. As always, the author displays a penetrating knowledge of the historical period, conjuring an authentic depiction of 1941 London. Overall, the plot is an exceedingly complicated one that will require a reader’s focused attention. Thankfully, though, despite the story’s complexity, it’s all related in a crisp, unclouded prose style.
A historically realistic and dramatically enthralling crime story.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9955667-0-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: London Wall Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | HISTORICAL MYSTERY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
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