P.C. Doherty, writing as Harding, launches yet another historical mystery series, this one featuring a medieval coroner of Falstaffian girth and deplorable manners, Sir John Cranston, and his able assistant, Brother Athelstan, a guilt-riddled Dominican, who takes careful notes of crime scenes, interrogations, and so forth when Sir John is sleeping off a tankard or two too many. In their introductory case, they're sent to investigate a murder/suicide: Sir Thomas, it seems, was poisoned by his servant Brampton, who then, in remorse, killed himself. But if that's so, why are so many others who were present that night also soon found dead? Has any of it to do with the affair between Sir Thomas's widow and his brother? The death of a sodomized page? The blackmailing of the young king's regent, who was conniving for the throne? Sir John and Athelstan painstakingly re-create Sir Thomas's death scene to wrest a confession from the guilty—and reveal a locked-room scenario as cunning as any ever devised by John Dickson Carr. Clever puzzle, bustling atmosphere, and one hopes the curmudgeonly Sir John will be toned down and made more likable in future endeavors.
Pub Date: May 22, 1992
ISBN: 0-688-11225-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
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