FOR SERVICES RENDERED

The latest case for the London enquiry agency Barker & Llewelyn is given a dangerous edge by the return of an old enemy determined to mess them about.

The year 1896 brings Dr. James Cantlie to the door of Cyrus Barker and his junior partner, Thomas Llewelyn, to ask their help in tracking down the whereabouts of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a former medical student of Cantlie’s who’s become an unwelcome critic of the Qing dynasty. Cantlie believes that Sun, who stopped off to visit his old mentor on his way from Hong Kong to his youthful home of Hawai‘i, has been detained by the Chinese embassy, and he’s right on the money. Sun has been kidnapped and imprisoned in the embassy until he can be quietly shipped back to China and executed. Even before feisty Barker and his suave amanuensis figure out a strategy to rescue Sun, they’ve already learned that Sebastian Nightwine, last seen being killed by Barker in a duel in Fatal Enquiry (2014), has returned as a ghost. No, he’s not a ghost; he’s as alive and unscrupulous as ever, and it seems likely that he’s the person who made off with the Osprey, the ship he sold to Barker before the bottom fell out of their friendship. In addition, Nightwine’s daughter, Sofia Ilyanova, aka assassin La Sylphide, is also back in the picture, threatening Llewelyn, whose son she bore, and his more conventional family. When Sir Halliday Macartney, the British counsel to the embassy, taunts his prisoner, “No one will ever remember the name Sun Yat-sen,” he reveals the story’s principal weakness, since many readers will mutter, “Yeah, right.”

A historical mystery a little too grounded in public history to be very mysterious.