Historical background adds depth to a complex, exciting mystery.
Lady Emily Hargreaves, Alexander’s durable heroine, returns to Italy in 1903 in a tale of murder, espionage, and hidden treasure.
Colin Hargreaves, Lady Emily’s husband, recently discovered a daughter, Katharina von Lang, whose existence had been unknown to him. As tensions with Germany increase, Colin, an agent of the British crown, is assigned to a case in Florence, where Katharina owns a villa inherited from her mother. Visiting her provides cover for Colin as he, Emily, and her friend Cécile du Lac meet with Colin’s colleague Darius Benton-Smith. The villa is well guarded by faithful servants, but its peace is shattered by the murder of one of Benton-Smith’s sources. A maid reveals that the house holds secrets going back 400 years to the time of Savonarola, who railed against the rich and destroyed many artworks. Emily and Cécile are intrigued by both the murder and the many clues written on the walls of the villa, which purport to lead to a mysterious treasure. Even though Colin can’t confide in her, Emily resolves to investigate. Her first step is to learn more about the villa and its former inhabitants. Alternating chapters explore the life of Mina Portinari, one of these tenants, whose grandfather exposed her to radical ideas and more education than most young women could dream of in 1480. Her story becomes deeply intertwined with the hidden treasure as Emily and Cécile put their lives in danger searching for clues.
Historical background adds depth to a complex, exciting mystery.Pub Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2506-2206-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
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
A series debut that retains many of the conventions of a village cozy, just more broadly drawn, like a greeting card.
Under the fig-leaf Black pseudonym, newcomers Jocelyn Cole and Sharon Nagel introduce an animals-only village in which members of many species coexist, except when they’re killing each other.
Nobody much liked Otto Sumpf, but nobody can imagine who disliked the toad enough to stab him in the back and dump him into a pond. The mystery deepens when Solomon Broadhead, the adder who serves as Shady Hollow’s medical examiner, announces that Otto has been poisoned as well, presumably by something introduced into the bottle of plum wine foxy reporter Vera Vixen found near his body. Tracing the bottle to its likely source, the Bamboo Patch vegetarian restaurant, she learns from owner Sun Li, a giant panda with a medical background, that the likely agent was heartstill, a little of which goes a long way. Of the two bears in the local police, Chief Theodore Meade is as usual out past his depth, and the paw prints at the crime scene have led Deputy Orville Braun to arrest crooked raccoon Lefty, who’s obviously innocent of this particular crime. The killer meanwhile moves on to bigger game, wealthy sawmill owner Reginald von Beaverpelt, who survives one murder attempt thanks to Sun Li but not a second, leaving Shady Hollow on shaky financial ground. Although it’s clear that Reginald has been carrying on with rest-home aide Ruby Ewing, the authors mercifully avoid any lurid details of beaver-sheep sex. Instead, intrepid Vera, the most charming figure here, dutifully checks alibis and interviews suspects who draw more clearly on human than animal stereotypes.
A series debut that retains many of the conventions of a village cozy, just more broadly drawn, like a greeting card.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-31571-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
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