CHARLES TODD – An Impartial Witness. William Morrow, hardcover, August 2010. Trade paperback: Harper, August 2011.

Genre:   Amateur sleuth. Leading character:   Bess Crawford; 2nd in series. Setting:   England-France, 1917-World War I.

First Sentence:   As my train pulled into London, I looked out at the early summer rain and was glad to see the dreary day had followed me from Hampshire.

    WWI battlefield nurse Bess Crawford had been caring for a badly burned young pilot who had a picture of his wife visibly displayed. In a train station traveling on leave back to London, Bess happens to see the wife who is clearly upset as she sees off a different soldier.

    Although somewhat perplexed by the scene, it is nothing to the shock Bess feels when a drawing of the woman appears in the next day’s paper with Scotland Yard asking whether someone can identify her. Bess learns the woman had been murdered and shortly after, the burned husband commits suicide. Bess feels it is her responsibility to find out what had happened.

    This is the second book in this new series by the Todds and I much preferred it to the first book. Their voice for Bess is much better and she’s a stronger character.

    The sense of chaos and fatigue from being in combat is well conveyed, but with a sense of detachment I feel one would acquire after time. The contrast between the battlefield and being in London, particularly attending the house party, is very effective.

    I like that Bess doesn’t jump to conclusions but gathers the evidence bit-by-bit and over time. The plot was well constructed and the reason for Bess being involved was justifiable. Although I understood Beth’s distance from the events, it did all feel a bit too distant as a reader; I was never emotionally connected to the story.

    While I never considered not finishing the book, for me it wasn’t a gripping straight-through read either. That said, Todd is an excellent writer and I always look forward to the next book.

Rating:   Good Plus.

      The Bess Crawford mysteries —

1. A Duty to the Dead (2009)

2. An Impartial Witness (2010)
3. A Bitter Truth (2011)

   Herewith the detective fiction books of the previous month, as selected by Time Magazine, October 24, 1932. They are listed in order of merit, as stated in the article, along with brief descriptions of the plots of each. How many have you read?

THE STUDENT FRATERNITY MURDER—Milton Prosper —Bobbs-Merrill ($2). Skilled Detective Rankin points the crime through yellow hoods and yellow hair.

THE END OF MR. GARMENT—Vincent Starrett—Crime Club ($2). Stabbing of a famed writer whom many disliked and had opportunity to kill.

THE CORPSE ON THE WHITE HOUSE LAWN—“Diplomat”—Covici, Friede ($2). A smart, lucky young diplomat solves the code, retrieves the papers, catches the murderer.

THE RESURRECTION MURDER CASE— Stanley Hart Page—Knopf ($2). Christopher Hand forces self-identification of the murderer by trickery with a skull.

POISON IN JEST—John Dickinson Carr — Harper ($2). Introducing mirth-provoking Detective Rossiter in poison cut. hatchet murder and necrophilia. [sic]

MURDER IN MARYLAND—Leslie Ford—Farrar & Rinehart ($2 ). The murder of a small town’s most hated woman solved by the town’s woman doctor.

DOUBLE DEATH—Freeman Wills Croft —Harper ($2). Sly tricks in murder on a background of railroad construction.

INSPECTOR HIGGINS HURRIES— Cecil Freeman Gregg—Dial ($2). Twenty-four hours of hurly-burly mystery-solving.

CUT THROAT — Christopher Bush — Morrow ($2). Much ado about clocks.

MURDERER’S LUCK — Henry Holt — Crime Club ($2). Multiple killings in rural England.

THE SECRET OF THE MORGUE—Frederick G. Eberhard — Macaulay ($2). Autopsy technique in a story of bootlegging and body-swapping.

THE OSTREKOFF JEWEL— E. Phillips Oppenheim—Little, Brown ($2). A young diplomat gets a princess and her jewels out of revolutionary Russia, with, of course, difficulties.

MURDER ON THE GLASS FLOOR—Viola Brothers Shore— Long & Smith ($2). A liner’s new dance floor christened by a murdered woman.

PETE HAMILL – Dirty Laundry. Bantam, paperback original, 1978.

   Sam Briscoe, 200 pounds of Irish Jew, is not a private eye, but a newspaper reporter — very nearly the next best thing, as I’ve implied before — presently free-lancing, but once a top columnist for a New York paper. (Hamill makes no secret of the fact that he regards this series as an integral part of his imaginary autobiography.)

   A one-time girl friend calls on Sam for help, but on her way to him she’s smashed up while crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. The night is cold, and Sam has no idea that the killer’s trail will soon be leading him into sunny Mexico, and involve him deeply in the affairs of some renegade revolutionaries from Cuba.

   And thereby all the ingredients of the traditional hard-boiled paperback novel are here — crime, passion, greed, lust, and revenge; the fire isn’t. And yet, if your taste runs toward the fulfillment of adolescent male fantasies, I think you’ll like it just fine.

Rating:   C plus.

[UPDATE] 03-15-11.   I had the impression back in 1979, that Sam Briscoe was going to hang around as a character a lot longer than he did, which was only two three books.

   Of course with a line like the one below, excerpted from an online biography, you can understand that the writing of PBO mysteries was not going to be a career-changer for him:

    “He [Pete Hamill] has been a columnist for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and New York Newsday, the Village Voice, New York magazine and Esquire. He has served as editor-in-chief of both the Post and the Daily News.

   And as they say, there is more, much more. The Sam Briscoe books are not mentioned.

   From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

PETE(r) HAMILL. 1935- .
      Dirty Laundry (n.) Bantam 1978 [Sam Briscoe]
      The Deadly Piece (n.) Bantam 1979 [Sam Briscoe]

      The Guns of Heaven (n.) Bantam 1983. [the third Sam Briscoe adventure; see comments]

DOROTHY GARDINER – The Trans-Atlantic Ghost. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1933.

   The detective in what was Mrs. Gardiner’s first mystery novel has a well-chosen name, I think you’ll agree, but the fact is that while Mr. Watson indeed did work for 20 years for the New York Police Department, he was for all that time a minor clerk, a statistician. (Though, of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that!)

   The locked room murder he’s called upon to solve in this book is in California, however, where he finds himself as part of an around-the-world cruise he’s about to embark on, as he heads back home to his native England for good.

   The locked room is in an English castle that’s been transported across the ocean and rebuilt in the hills of California by a wealthy millionaire; there is some talk of ghosts, and some obnoxious louts who call themselves policemen, led by the appropriately named Captain Bulnose; and lots of suspects.

   What makes this book so disappointing is difficult to describe without giving the entire solution away, and you may as well have your own chance at it. Allow me to suggest, however, that it’s the obvious one, and one that at one point Watson is solemnly assured could not be the explanation.

   Of course we shouldn’t assume that everyone knows the truth, or speaks it, but some tiny spark of imagination is to be expected as well, isn’t it?

   There are some nicely humorous scenes to be pleased with, such as when the string on Watson’s pajamas gives way at one crucial point, and to be honest, this was no real chore to read, but as a mystery, it’s (sadly) rather a silly one.

Rating: C minus.

[UPDATE] 03-12-11.   A scarce book, with only a single copy of the US edition listed on ABE, and my copy has no jacket, thus no image above.

   I don’t know much about the author, but according to one website: “Dorothy Gardiner was born in Naples, Italy. She grew up in Boulder, Colorado. In 1917, she graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in History. During the Second World War she was in charge of all the files and records for the North-Atlantic Area office of the American Red Cross.”

   From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, a list of her mystery fiction:

GARDINER, DOROTHY. 1894-1979.
      The Transatlantic Ghost (n.) Doubleday 1933 [Mr. Watson]
      A Drink for Mr. Cherry (n.) Doubleday 1934 [Mr. Watson]
      Beer for Psyche (n.) Doubleday 1946
      What Crime Is It? (n.) Doubleday 1956 [Sheriff Moss Magill]
      The Seventh Mourner (n.) Doubleday 1958 [Sheriff Moss Magill]

       Lion in Wait (n.) Doubleday 1963 [Sheriff Moss Magill]

   She also edited For Love or Money: The 1957 Anthology of the Mystery Writers of America (Doubleday Crime Club, 1957).

HAROLD ADAMS – A Perfectly Proper Murder. Carl Wilcox #11. Walker, hardcover, 1993. No paperback edition.

   This is one of my favorite series, with a regional and historical background set in Depression era South Dakota and Minnesota.

   Carl Wilcox is an ex-con, now a semi-itinerant sign painter. He finds himself looking for work in Podunkville, and quickly manages to offend the town’s leading citizen. The next day the man is found murdered, and Wilcox briefly comes under suspicion.

   Thanks to his past help to his hometown law, he is enlisted by the local cop to help investigate the case. It turns out that the murdered man wasn’t really a very nice person, with wife-beating and wholesale philandering among his more easily provable sins. Darker yet are hinted at. Suspects include but are not limited to his young wife and his children by an earlier marriage.

   Once again, Adams’ strengths are quickly apparent. The first-person narrative is easy and unforced, and the dialogue is realistic and entertaining. Adams has a knack for characterization in few words, and all of the the players come alive enough to believe in and relate to.

   The small-town ambiance of the time is thick enough to cut with a knife, and tasty to boot. On the down side, I think Adams may be overworking the device of Wilcox helping the law, and this is a very slender book for the price. It’s still a fine series, though, from a fine writer.

      The Carl Wilcox series —

1. Murder, 1981

2. Paint the Town Red, 1982
3. The Missing Moon, 1983

4. The Naked Liar, 1985 (Shamus nomination)
5. The Fourth Widow, 1986
6. The Barbed Wire Noose, 1987
7. The Man Who Met the Train, 1988
8. The Man Who Missed the Party, 1989
9. The Man Who Was Taller Than God, 1992 (Shamus Award)

10. A Perfectly Proper Murder, 1993
11. A Way with Widows, 1994

12. The Ditched Blonde, 1995
13. Hatchet Job, 1996
14. The Ice Pick Artist, 1997
15. No Badge, No Gun, 1998 (Shamus nomination)

16. Lead, So I Can Follow, 1999

        #2. HAPPY McGONIGLE, by Paul Allenby.

   The Happy McGonigle stories by Paul Allenby was a short series of at least eight stories published in Detective Fiction Weekly from 1940 through 1941. The stories are about the misadventures of petty criminal Happy McGonigle and his partner in crime, Blackie Roberts.

   The stories are narrated in first person by Blackie Roberts, who tries to explain the problems of trying to plan and commit crimes with a person like Happy McGonigle. In the first story Roberts explains very briefly what McGonigle is like:

   Roberts notes that he has trained Happy over a ten year period, and that Happy is handy with burglar tools and in fights, but often makes him sorry he knows him. Blackie explains that he is the brains of the duo, and Happy is the brawn. Trying to plan crimes with help like Happy is difficult. He has to be careful to explain the crime plans very carefully to Happy, who is often not paying close attention.

   Happy is happiest when he is involved with his latest hobby. He has been through many hobbies, and in the first story in the series, “A Cockeyed Wiggley,” his hobby is collecting matchbook covers. This hobby causes problems with their crime plan for this story, but somehow everything turns out all right, though they don’t make any money from their crime.

   The next story, “Red, White and Very Blue,” finds the two criminals on their way back from gambling on horse racing at Pimlico, stopping off in Washington, D.C. for some rest and relaxation. Happy turns into a typical tourist, going to see all the sites and spending a lot of money on fancy clothes.

   They run into trouble when they encounter a group of spies. The spies con the two out of all of their money, and also con them into stealing airplane plans from a house. Fortunately for them, they realize what is going on and hand the plans back to the U.S. Government, and wind up making themselves look like heroes in the process.

   As shown in the story, Black Roberts can be just about as gullible and naïve as Happy McGonigle. So Blackie’s comments about his partner need to be taken with a grain or two of salt.

   In the story “In the Bag,” the two are planning a jewel robbery, but another of Happy’s hobbies interferes with the plans. Happy has started taking dancing lessons in order to be an “adagio” dancer.

   Blackie thinks this is ridiculous and tries to get Happy to work with him on the robbery. But Happy has promised to deliver a suitcase for the dance teacher. The title refers to the fact that three new identical leather suitcases become involved in the plot and the guys try to keep straight which contains what.

   When the newspaper reports that the dance studio staff has been arrested for drug smuggling, the bag situation gets more complicated.

   In “Gone With the McGonigle,” Happy’s newest hobby is to become a writer. So he buys a lot of paper, a filing cabinet, a portable table, and a typewriter. After spending all of this money he thinks he is ready to become a writer.

   However, he finds being a writer is not all it is cracked up to be. Happy finally goes on a destructive rampage through his editor’s house, which he and Blackie are burglarizing.

   In “McGonigle the Great,” Happy is struck with the wish to be a professional magician. He learns a number of magic tricks while he and Blackie are staying at a large hotel. Unfortunately, he makes so many mistakes that people laugh at his act.

   Even though the audiences enjoy the mistakes, Happy does not like being laughed at. Blackie notes that Happy is somewhat deficient in a sense of humor. While all of this is going on, Blackie Roberts and a newspaper reporter (who is teaching Happy magic tricks) are searching the hotel for an absconding bank teller who has stolen a hundred thousand dollars. The magic act plus the search make for a situation that is sure to get out of hand quickly.

   â€œMcGonigle Makes a Bid” finds the duo trying to take a vacation and behave in a law-abiding manner. They head off to the wilds in a car, but wind up stranded at a large house occupied by a crazy man. Unknown to them, the grounds are also the hiding place of three criminals who don’t like the interruption of Happy and Blackie.

   In “Bombs Tick Once Too Often”, Happy and Blackie are visiting the World’s Fair and trying to enjoy themselves. However, Happy thinks that someone is trying to plant a bomb at the Fair. Their first move is to follow two suspicious acting characters (who are carrying a suitcase) around the Fair. Later, when Happy discovers a bag that is ticking and whirring, he is positive he has found a bomb. Altogether, a very stressful day for Blackie and Happy.

   â€œThe Skeleton of Danny Force” is atypical of the other stories in the series. Happy McGonigle does not play the primary focus of the story. Blackie Roberts is more the focus of this story, as he and Happy go out to a rural town to help one of Happy’s friends in his dealings with the local Scrooge-like banker. A skeleton is dug up by a local, and this provides the means by which Blackie can counter the banker and get the better of him.

   The final story, “In Union There Is McGonigle,” The two guys get into union activity, primarily because they think they can make some money in it. Definitely not in it for the benefit of the workers of pretzel salters industry, which is their working area.

   As usual, they run into numerous complications in the process, and only Blackie’s planning gets them out of the situation and with a profit for a change. Also as usual, it was Happy’s doing that they got into union activity in the first place. He doesn’t appear to ever think through the consequences of his actions.

   As you no doubt can tell from the above story descriptions, this series is meant to be a light comedy series of stories. No seriousness invades the stories, and the cast bumbles their way along the story lines without any serious damage or landing in jail.

   The series is not really that funny, however, though it aims to be. It is okay as a mildly humorous look at two bumbling criminals.

   There were other humorous series in DFW in the past, including two (Fluffy McGoff , 1931-37, and Murray Magimple, 1935-37) by Milo Ray Phelps, who died in 1937. Not having read much of the various humorous series, I can’t say which ones are the best or succeed at being funny.

        The Happy McGonigle series by Paul Allenby:

A Cockeyed Wiggley     March 9, 1940
Red, White and Very Blue     March 30, 1940
* Grand Marshal McGonigle     June 1, 1940
In the Bag     June 15, 1940
Gone With the McGonigle     June 29, 1940
McGonigle the Great     August 3, 1940
McGonigle Makes a Bid     August 17, 1940
Bombs Tick Once Too Often     October 19, 1940
* Insurance for Sale     November 23, 1940
The Skeleton of Danny Force     January 18, 1941
In Union There Is McGonigle     April 26, 1941
* It’s All in the Angle     May 31, 1941

(*) These three were added after the list was first posted. Thanks to Phil Stephensen-Payne for pointing them out as likely possibilities in the comments, and for Walker Martin for confirming that they are indeed McGonigle stories.

Previously on this blog:   #1. Shamus Maguire by Stanley Day.

    ● Reported first by Jiro Kimura on his Gumshoe website, mystery and SF writer Edward Wellen died on January 15, 2011. Noted primarily for his short fiction, Mr. Wellen wrote two crime novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, and one collection of criminous short stories:

EDWARD (Paul) WELLEN 1919-2011.
      Hijack. Beagle, pb, 1971.

      An Hour to Kill. St. Martin’s, hc, 1993.
      Perps. Five Star, ss collection, hc, 2001.

   Hijack was a science fiction novel with a considerable crime component; the blurb on the front cover says “The Mafia takes to space!” A shorter version was published earlier in Venture SF (May 1970).

   A list of Wellen’s short SF can be found here on ISFDB, while some of his short work in the mystery (and western) field can be found here in The FictionMags Index.

   The earliest story there is “Enough Rope,” 2-Gun Western, August 1953, which is enough to qualify him as a pulp fiction writer, a category whose number is sadly decreasing every month.

    ● The death of author Barbara Whitehead was reported first by UK mystery writer Martin Edwards on his blog, Do You Write Under Your Own Name?

   Martin says in part: “Barbara came to crime fiction late after writing historical romances and non-fiction. Her first crime novel, Playing God, had an interesting background of the York mystery plays. It became the opening entry in her “York cycle of mysteries”, which eventually ran to eight titles spanning a decade of publication. Her main character was Detective Superintendent Bob Southwell and she was especially good at evoking the atmosphere of York Minster and the wonderful old city around it.”

BARBARA (Maude) WHITEHEAD. 1930-2011. Series character Inspector Robert Southwell in all titles:

       Playing God (n.) Quartet 1988; St. Martin’s, 1989.
       The Girl with Red Suspenders (n.) Constable 1990; St. Martin’s, 1990.
       The Dean It Was That Died (n.) Constable 1991; St. Martin’s, 1991.
       Sweet Death, Come Softly (n.) Constable 1992; St. Martin’s, 1993.

       The Killings at Barley Hall (n.) Constable 1995.
       Secrets of the Dead (n.) Constable 1996.
       Death at the Dutch House (n.) Constable 1997.
       Dolls Don’t Choose (n.) Constable 1998.

   The last four books have never been published in the US. For more information about her life and career, her webpage http://www.barbarawhitehead.com/ is still online.

   According to his entry in Wikipedia, before he became a writer, the multi-talented Lou Cameron was a comic book illustrator, a fact that I did not know before putting this page together, with his work for Classics Illustrated being perhaps the most well known.

   Listed below are his crime fiction titles (only) as included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, along with as many covers as I have been able to come up.

   He also wrote many westerns, both in the traditional vein and for several of the “adult” sexy western series. He created the “Longarm” series, for example, as Tabor Evans; wrote most if not all of the Stringer series; and as Ramsey Thorne, the “Renegade” novels.

   In 1976, Cameron won a WWA Spur award in 1976 for his novel The Spirit Horses.

   More? He has written war novels, adventure novels, science fiction, movie novelizations and more, most of which you can find listed on the Wikipedia page (see above).

   When James Reasoner reviewed Cameron’s western novel The Buntline Special on his blog last year about this same time, he filled in some the details of Cameron’s career and spoke highly of his very effective and distinctive writing style.

   Lou Cameron didn’t write for the pulp magazines, but throughout his writing career, he has been a Grand Master of pulp fiction, no doubt about it.

LOU CAMERON. 1924- . Pseudonyms: Julie Cameron & Dagmar.

    Angel’s Flight (n.) Gold Medal 1960

    The Empty Quarter (n.) Gold Medal 1962 [Saudi Arabia]
    The Sky Divers (n.) Gold Medal 1962

    The Block Busters (n.) McKay 1964 [New York City, NY]
    The Dragon’s Spine (n.) Avon 1968 [Viet Nam]
    File on a Missing Redhead (n.) Gold Medal 1968 [Las Vegas, NV]

    The Outsider (n.) Popular Library 1969 [Los Angeles, CA]
    The Amphorae Pirates (n.) Random 1970 [Italy]
    Before It’s Too Late (n.) Gold Medal 1970

    Behind the Scarlet Door (n.) Gold Medal 1971

    The Girl with the Dynamite Bangs (n.) Lancer 1973 [Brazil]
    Barca (n.) Berkley 1974 [New Jersey]

    The Closing Circle (n.) Berkley 1974 [New York City, NY]

    Tancredi (n.) Berkley 1975 [New Jersey]
    Dekker (n.) Berkley 1976

    The Sky Riders (n.) Gold Medal 1976 [Greece]
    Code Seven (n.) Berkley 1977
    The Subway Stalker (n.) Dell 1980
    The Hot Car (n.) Avon 1981 [Los Angeles, CA]

JULIE CAMERON. Pseudonym of Lou Cameron.

    The Darklings (Berkley, 1975, pb)

    Devil in the Pines (Berkley, 1975, pb)

DAGMAR. Pseudonym of Lou Cameron.

    The Spy with the Blue Kazoo (Lancer, 1967, pb) [Regina; Central America]

    The Spy Who Came In from the Copa (Lancer, 1967, pb) [Regina; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil]

[UPDATE] 03-04-11.   Bill Crider’s nostalgic review of File on a Missing Redhead appears today on his blog, complete with details of what was happening on the same day that he read it the first time, January 27, 1969.

BEVERLEY NICHOLS – Murder by Request. Hutchinson, UK, hardcover, 1960. E. P. Dutton, US, hardcover, 1960.

   No Man’s Street, Beverley Nichols’ first novel featuring Horatio Green, retired private detective, I found not too impressive.

   The plot was good, but it seemed to me that Nichols, having an impressive background as a mainstream novelist, was just toying with the mystery form. In that [first] case, Green was merely a bundle of idiosyncrasies.

   With Nichols’ second mystery, The Moonflower (published in the U.S. as The Moonflower Mystery), Green, probably because of the horticultural background, his avocation, comes alive and retains that attribute through the following three novels in the series.

   In this, the last of his investigations after his “retirement” at approximately age sixty, Green is invited by Sir Owen Kent, famous financier, to Harmony Hall, the foremost Nature Cure establishment in England. Kent will be spending the Christmas season there himself, and he has received, in the most astonishing ways, threats on his life.

   The threatener succeeds in his or her threat, Kent being shot in a room where there are sixteen people, but no one sees the murderer.

   A baffling crime, a bit too much even for Green, but when the investigation starts slowing down, fresh clues, reminiscent of those in a mystery novel, pop up. The publishers say that the murderer “is the last person whom even the most hardened expert in whodunits would expect.”

   I would differ. Still, it’s a fascinating case.

Bio-Bibliographic Notes:   John Beverley Nichols (1898-1983) was a multi-talented man. According to Wikipedia, he was “an author, playwright, journalist, composer, and public speaker,” with substantial credentials provided in each category to prove it.

   From the same source, “Nichols is now best remembered for his gardening books, the first of which, Down the Garden Path, […] has been in print almost continuously since first published in 1932.”

       The Horatio Green series —

1. No Man’s Street (1954)
2. The Moonflower (1955) (aka The Moonflower Murder, US)

3. Death to Slow Music (1956)

4. The Rich Die Hard (1957)

5. Murder by Request (1960)

IMOGEN ROBERTSON – Anatomy of Murder. Headline, UK, hardcover, 2010.

Genre:   Historical mystery. Leading characters:   Harriet Westerman & Gabriel
Crowther; 2nd in series. Setting:   England-Georgian era/1781.

First Sentence:   Captain Westerman was in his cabin reading the letter from his wife for the fourth time when he heard the officer of the morning watch ring Six Bells.

    Mrs. Harriet Westerman and her friend, anatomist Gabriel Crowther, are once again embroiled in solving a murder. However, the stakes are even higher as they deal with treason against England during the Revolutionary War.

    In a much less elegant part of London, a Tarot-card reader sees the impending murder of one of her clients. Although she fails in preventing the murder, she is determined to bring the woman’s killers to justice.

    Beginning with an exciting and dramatic scene, this is one of those can’t-stop-until-I-finish-it books. Ms. Robertson’s writing is atmospheric and insightful with a strong sense of time and place, subtle, wry humor, a marvelous voice and style which evoke the period and the emotions of the characters.

    I found it fascinating to see the Revolution from the English perspective. Harriet, intuitive and more able to relate to others, and Crowther, the cold, analytic scientist, balance each other well.

    Harriet is someone who, as a real person, I should like very much. We learn more of Crowther and his past, which hints of much more to come. I am enjoying the evolution of their relationship despite the differences in the ages and natures.

    All the characters are alive and wonderful. It’s nice to see the characters from the first book, including Molloy, and meet the delightful new characters Jocasta, Sam and Boyo. (I did feel a cast of characters would have been helpful.)

    The captivating plot, good twist, the way in which the threads were brought together was wonderful. Set in 1781 during the Revolution, the story deals with traitors, murder and opera with a touch of the metaphysical. It takes you from the Opera house and salons of the wealthy to the meanest slums of London revealing the apathy and cruelty which resides in each.

    Ms. Robertson is one of the best new-to-me-authors I’ve found this year. Her writing is insightful with interesting observations on celebrity worship, and encourages one to look at things from a different perspective. It is not often that events in a book make me truly cry, but it speaks to speaks to an author’s skill that her writing evokes strong emotion.

    Anatomy of Murder was an excellent read but I recommend starting with her first book. I can’t wait for her next book.

Rating:   Excellent.

    The Harriet Westerman & Gabriel Crowther series —

1. Instruments of Darkness (2009)

2. Anatomy of Murder (2010)
3. Island of Bones (2011)