BARBARA CLEVERLY – Not My Blood. Soho Crime, hardcover, August 2012.

Genre:   Historical / Police procedural. Leading character:   Joe Sandilands, 10th in series. Setting:   England; 1933.

First Sentence:   Carrying more than a hint of snow, a southwesterly wind gusted up from the Channel, spattering the school’s plate glass windows with sleety drops.

   A phone call from a young boy named Jackie Drummond has Joe Sandilands traveling to a boarding school in Sussex where a teacher has been murdered. The case raises a number of questions for Joe. His suspicions aroused, can the boy actually be his illegitimate son? Why is Dorcus Joliffe, the daughter of close friends, who had recently been avoiding Joe, suddenly insistent on helping him with this case?

   However, the main question is what has happened to a surprising number of missing boys, each from a wealthy family. With Dorcus to aid him, Sandilands is headed to school, looking for answers.

   Barbara Cleverly really knows how to captivate her readers from the very first page. Her excellent descriptions of period, place and weather create the atmosphere and bring us straight into the story. It is fascinating to see this period of history between the wars when women are becoming police officers and education reform in public schools is beginning.

   The characters are charismatic and real: Joe, his sister Lydia, Jackie, ever-clever aide de camp Alfred, and Dorcus who is now grown and has a degree in psychology. These are people you come to know by Cleverly providing enough history that new readers don’t feel lost and with whom fans of the series have become friends.

   I am not normally a fan of relationships between two principle characters, but Ms. Cleverly makes it work and faithful readers will see things progress as they may have hoped it would so do.

   Dialogue makes such a difference and here, it is excellent and reflective of the period and class. Ms. Cleverly’s writing is wonderfully literate and she expects the reader to be the same. At the same time, she isn’t trying to embarrass or be over the head of the reader. The meaning is always clear from the context: “If anyone’s been setting himself up as some sort of a psychopompos, a guide to the souls to the Land of the Dead — a Hermes, or even a playful Peter Pan — we’ll have him.”

   The intrigue and subterfuge is masterfully created, yet clever plotting and occasional humor keep things from becoming overly grim. This is a time when science is evolving. The motive is horrific but not inconceivable, and that makes it the more terrible still.

   Not My Blood is an excellent traditional police procedural driven by intelligent dialogue and charismatic characters and where the case is solved by following the clues and having a good working relationship with the other branches involved. It also has a wonderful, lovely ending. This is a very good series which should be read in order.

Rating: Very Good Plus.

Editorial Comment:   LJ’s review of Strange Images of Death, the 8th in the Sandilands series, may be found here on this blog. Following the review is a list of the first eight in the series. Missing is The Blood Royal (2011), number nine.