Middling work for the peerless James, a whodunit as deeply shadowed by mortality as all Dalgliesh’s cases ever since Shroud...
James’s 18th novel revisits familiar ground—an insular social setting disrupted by a shocking murder—with consummate artistry.
For 34 years Rhoda Gradwyn has carried the legacy of her father’s abuse in the form of a disfiguring facial scar. Now a distinguished investigative journalist, she decides to have it removed because, as she tells Harley Street plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell, “I no longer have need of it.” The operation, performed in the surgeon’s private clinic in Cheverell Manor, is successful, but it still proves fatal for Rhoda, who’s strangled the following night. The murder scene, as usual in James (The Lighthouse, 2005, etc.), is thick with likely suspects and motives. Rhoda’s friend Robin Boyton, who recommended the clinic, is convinced that his cousins, assistant surgeon Marcus Westhall and his sister Candace, cheated Robin out of his rightful inheritance. Helena Haverland, the clinic’s general administrator, is still smarting over her family’s loss of Cheverell Manor to Chandler-Powell. Head nurse Flavia Holland is maddened by spurned love. Kitchen helper Robin Bateman is hiding a dire secret. Nor does anyone seem to mourn a woman who made her living by exposing unsavory secrets. Commander Adam Dalgliesh, called away from a meeting with his prospective father-in-law, and his colleagues uncover a series of red herrings as ritualistically as Hercule Poirot, but with a great deal more psychological nuance, before the killer, who could be practically anyone, is finally unmasked.
Middling work for the peerless James, a whodunit as deeply shadowed by mortality as all Dalgliesh’s cases ever since Shroud for a Nightingale (1971).Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-27077-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
Utter non-scents.
Die-hard Yankee candle maker Stella Wright (Murder’s No Votive Confidence, 2018) gets caught up in a trans-Atlantic murder plot.
Stella thoroughly enjoys her trip to Paris even though her mother, perfume expert Millie Wright, who’s scheduled to speak on a panel entitled “The Art of Scent Extractions” at the World Perfumery Conference, gets preempted by a murder. Sadly, once they’re back home in Nantucket, things get even weirder. Stella receives an anonymous note threatening her mom if Stella doesn’t turn over a secret formula hidden in Millie’s bag. Her mom can’t help because she’s in the hospital courtesy of an overenthusiastic attempt by Stella’s cat, Tinker, to befriend her. While trespassing on a suspicious sailboat, Stella meets U.S. Agent Sarah Hill, who warns her that well-known anarchist Rex Laruam plans to disrupt the upcoming Peace Jubilee using a stolen formula he secreted in Millie’s bag after he stabbed the agent guarding it back in Paris. Ignoring the advice of her friend Andy Southerland, a Nantucket cop, to leave detection to the professionals, Stella tries to unmask the elusive Laruam. As she spies on a bevy of unlikely suspects, the plot spirals further and further out of control: There’s a Canadian couple staying at an Airbnb run by Stella’s cousin Chris who whisper sweet but suspicious nothings in the dark, a shovel-wielding schoolmarm, a gang of old geezers who have a collective crush on Millie, a surprise 30th-birthday party planned by Stella’s beau, Peter Bailey, and an even more surprising impromptu airplane ride.
Utter non-scents.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2141-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A middling mystery with telling historical details and the usual pleasures provided by the regulars’ interpersonal dynamics.
A plucky group of early-20th-century detectives (Murder on Trinity Place, 2019, etc.) takes on the Black Hand.
The leads include Frank Malloy and Gino Donatelli, former police officers who started a detective agency after an unexpected legacy made Malloy a wealthy man; Malloy’s wife, Sarah, the daughter of a wealthy society family who runs a maternity clinic for the poor; and their nanny, Maeve, a budding sleuth who works in Malloy’s office. All of them leap to attention when Gino’s sister-in-law Teodora reports that Jane Harding, a worker at the settlement house where Teo volunteers, has been kidnapped by the Black Hand, who are notorious for abducting the wives and children of anyone who can afford to pay ransom. The New York Police Department is corrupt, and the local Italian immigrants never report crimes. Mr. McWilliam, who runs the settlement house, had asked Jane to marry him, but she’d asked him to allow her to experience more of the single life before deciding. Seeking clues, Sarah visits Mrs. Cassidi, an earlier kidnapping victim who’s refused to talk to anyone, in hopes that her nursing experience and sympathetic manner will get results. Mrs. Cassidi admits to being raped but knows little about where she was held captive, a quiet place in a house where she could hear children. Soon after Nunzio Esposito, a leader of the Black Hand, tells Malloy that no one’s been taken from the settlement house, Jane suddenly reappears but refuses to discuss where she’s been. Lisa Prince, Jane’s well-to-do cousin, reluctantly agrees to take her in even though Jane’s jealous of her wealth and can be unpleasant to deal with. When Esposito’s found murdered in a flat he rented for his mistress, Gino, who’s just arrived on the scene, is arrested. Now the clever sleuths must solve both the murder and the abductions to clear Gino’s name.
A middling mystery with telling historical details and the usual pleasures provided by the regulars’ interpersonal dynamics.Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0574-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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