86 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ SEPTEMEBER 2, 2019
Review_FICTION Review_FICTIONThe day before, Drummond was stabbed
with a sword by one of a group of young
men wearing blue uniforms on a London
street. Salisbury suspects that Drummond’s
assailants followed him from somewhere
on the Continent, but rather than have
Barker and Llewelyn investigate the
killing, he asks them to deliver a package
to Calais. Drummond had secreted a key
in his shoe, which led the Foreign Office
to a railway locker containing a satchel.
While the PM refuses to disclose what’s
inside, Barker manages to learn that the
contents are an ancient manuscript, which
may be a previously unknown gospel that
a scholar believes contains heretical ideas,
such as giving money “generously to the
poor.” Despite his instructions, Barker
delays heading to France and concentrates
instead on identifying who may be behind
Drummond’s death. Action trumps
detection in this outing. Series fans will
be disappointed. Agent: Maria Carvainis,
Maria Carvainis Agency. (Nov.)The Visitor
Zoë Miller. Hachette Ireland, $15.99 trade
paper (400p) ISBN 978-1-4736-6467-8
Widowed, grief-stricken Izzie Mallon,the heroine of this enjoyable psychological
thriller with a cozy vibe from Irish author
Miller (A House Full of Secrets), is planning
to spend Christmastime in isolation,
snowed up in her apartment in what
appears to be Dublin. Then an American
unexpectedly knocks on her door and
introduces himself as Eli Sanders, the best
friend of Izzie’s beloved late husband,
Sam. She halfheartedly welcomes the man,
whom she has never met, into her home
after learning that he was stranded at the
airport, but when Izzie catches Eli
attempting to access Sam’s laptop, she
begins to question his true identity. Later,
Noah Brady, Izzie’s 10-year-old neighbor,
notices inconsistencies in Eli’s memories
of Sam and fears she’s in danger. Noah
confides his concerns to his amiable father
and a grandmotherly neighbor, who
assume that Izzie is still in mourning and
tell the boy to respect her privacy. The
plot engages to the end, and touching
flashbacks depict Izzie’s life with Sam.
This is a great book for readers looking
for a suspense story with a lot of heart.
Agent: Sheila Crowley, Curtis Brown
(U.K.). (Nov.)Ash
James Rayburn. Blackstone, $26.99 (364p)
ISBN 978-1-5385-0751-3
Stay-at-home dad Danny Ash, the hero
of this uneven thriller from Rayburn (The
Truth Itself), has a ton of woes. His wife,
Jane, recently died under mysterious cir-
cumstances while working on a project in
China, and his 10-year-old son, Scooter,
hasn’t said a word since. One morning at
Ash’s Seattle home, Scooter’s babysitter
drugs the boy and lets in “a scrum of men
in dark clothes”;
they kidnap
Scooter, but
they want Ash.
Ash escapes, but
sinister forces
ensure that his
name and face
are all over Fox
News, where an
anchor calls him
a “fugitive
terror suspect.” Ash is really a pawn in a
game of high-stakes intrigue centered on
Jane’s boss, a “vulture capitalist” who
profits from “warfare and disaster and
debt and deprivation.” This unremittingly
grim and violent novel offers a dystopian
view of contemporary society—replete
with fake news, economic strife, opioid
addition, and terrorism—but it’s not sus-
penseful. The narrative is so overstuffed
with backstories and subplots that the
story of Ash trying to rescue Scooter is
almost lost. Fans of action-packed, cine-
matic thrillers will best appreciate this one.
Agent: Alice Martell, Martell Agency. (Nov.)Murder Off the Page:
A 42nd Street Library Mystery
Con Lehane. Minotaur, $26.99 (336p) ISBN 978-
1-250-31792-6
Lehane’s complicated third 42nd Street
Library mystery (after 2017’s Murder in the
Manuscript Room) opens with Raymond
Ambler, curator of the Manhattan library’s
crime fiction collection, helping Shannon
Darling research the personal papers of
mystery writer Jayne Galloway. Shannon
seems like a sad and vulnerable woman, so
Ray is taken aback when she disappears
with Ray’s bartender and sometime actor
friend, Brian McNulty (the star of Lehane’s
other series), after a man is found dead in her
hotel room. When Shannon is murdered,★ The Second Sleep
Robert Harris. Knopf, $26.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-525-65669-2T
hriller Award–winner Harris (Munich) does a masterly
job playing with readers’ expectations in this mystery
set in 15th-century England. Fr. Christopher Fairfax
has been dispatched by his bishop to Wessex to
officiate at the funeral of Fr. Thomas Lacy, a parish priest
who died in a fall. The assignment seems routine enough,
but on reaching the town of Addicott St. George, he
finds unexpected questions to answer. When he visits
Lacy’s library, he learns that the man he’s about to inter
in consecrated ground possessed numerous heretical
volumes relating to an antiquarian society proscribed by
the church. Eager to keep things uncomplicated, Fairfax
proceeds with the funeral service as if he’d never seen the books, only to have the
rites disrupted by an attendee who yells that Lacy’s death was not the result of
“evil chance.” When foul weather delays Fairfax’s departure, he finds even more
oddities, including the disappearance of the church register and an unsettling letter
by a Cambridge professor found in a mass grave, which supports his suspicion that
Lacy’s interest in the past was more than innocent scholarly curiosity. Few readers
will pick up on the fairly planted clues. This is a clever complement to Harris’s
debut mystery, Fatherland. 75,000-copy announced first printing. Agent: Michael
Carlisle, Inkwell Management. (Nov.)