A document of unquestioned historical importance that only the most devoted genre fans will read for fun.
A title with a strong claim to be America’s very first detective novel, first published in 1866, returns to print again.
As Leslie S. Klinger’s lucid introduction indicates, Regester is one of the many pseudonyms used by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor (1831-1885), a fabulously prolific dime novelist whose sagas combined adventure, crime, sensation, and the supernatural in varying proportions. But the conventions of this tale are very much those of the formal detective story. After a prologue showing how Richard Redfield, a clerk in the dead letter office, is electrified when he opens and reads a cryptic undelivered letter, Regester flashes back two years to the fatal stabbing of Henry Moreland. The victim’s fiancee, Eleanor Argyll, can’t help suspecting Redfield of the crime although, or because, he’s practically one of the family: a law student who works in the chambers of her father, Blankville attorney John Argyll, and happens to be sweet on Eleanor himself. Although the first clues implicate not Redfield but young seamstress Leesy Sullivan, Argyll, upon discovering that he’s been robbed of $2,000, asks Redfield to engage Mr. Burton, a noted detective, to look into the crimes. Burton follows the trail of the killer downstate to Manhattan, out west, and, with remarkable abruptness, to Acapulco before he identifies both the miscreant who stabbed Henry Moreland to death and the even more despicable client who hired the murderer. Conscientious, intuitive Burton, who prides himself on his ability to “feel the presence of criminals,” is no threat to Sherlock Holmes or even Ebenezer Gryce, and the only readers fooled by the solution will be those expecting twists that never arrive.
A document of unquestioned historical importance that only the most devoted genre fans will read for fun.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4642-1497-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
The heroine’s 62nd appearance is a hit-or-miss mystery best suited for readers already invested in her complicated life.
Lt. Eve Dallas is sucked into a murder that may well be overshadowed by another crime—and by the news that Roarke, her billionaire husband, is implicated in both felonies in an unexpected and troubling way.
Disturbed from her sleep, Aileen Carville arises to discover her wealthy husband, Nathan Barrister, coshed to death by a heavy amethyst from the collection of his late father, Zip Global founder Henry J. Barrister. His corpse is lying outside an open vault that everyone in the family insists they hadn’t known about until a couple of months ago, and it’s filled with priceless paintings and sculptures and jewels taken years ago from an A-list of museums, one of which—the Royal Suite, a legendary emerald setting—has evidently been stolen once again. The bombshell revelation that Henry must have commissioned the thefts himself leads to two questions—how did the thief who killed Nathan know about the vault and its contents, and what possessed Nathan’s wealthy father to steal and hide all these goodies in the first place?—that are much more interesting than whodunit, though only one of them will be satisfactorily answered. Another bombshell revelation follows: Roarke’s confession to Dallas that he stole the Royal Suite from London’s Tate Gallery when he was still a teenager, years before he turned away from a life of crime himself. Since Interpol is much more interested in the theft than the murder, there’s a real danger that they’ll decide Roarke was once again the thief. So, Dallas faces the double challenge of solving the crimes and keeping her beloved husband out of the frame.
The heroine’s 62nd appearance is a hit-or-miss mystery best suited for readers already invested in her complicated life.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414526
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
Demands a careful reading and knowledge of the Victorian lady detective’s history.
A mystery that unwinds in reverse adds new twists to Thomas’ Sherlock Holmes–inspired series.
The new Charlotte Holmes novel continues the tense chess game that the gender-flipped Sherlock is playing with Moriarty and an incarcerated acquaintance turned villain. The events are narrated as a series of flashbacks interspersed with an interrogation in which Charlotte is under suspicion of murder. While her friend Inspector Treadles nervously observes, a senior policeman grills the unflappable detective about her recent movements. Even as she gives him a bland account of why she’s crisscrossed the English Channel in recent weeks, readers get drips of information about what she and her family and friends have been up to, all building to a reveal. Two other seemingly unrelated mystery subplots enter the picture, but it’s evident that new events and characters are connected to familiar ones from the past. With allusions to previous novels in the Lady Sherlock series and hat tips to Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem” and the Guy Ritchie movie Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, the plot can be hard to follow, especially for new readers. The consistently well-drawn characters serve as an anchor, and the occasional glimpse of Charlotte’s love for her family and her lover, Lord Ingram Ashburton, adds a needed touch of warmth to the clever but clinical jigsaw structure of the mystery.
Demands a careful reading and knowledge of the Victorian lady detective’s history.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9780593640432
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
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