88 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ SEPTEMEBER 2, 2019
Review_FICTION Review_FICTIONwork on the case is sidetracked by her
antagonistic boss, Det. Insp. Greg Johns,
who orders her to deal with issues relating
to a traveling circus. The Darling Brothers’
Circus, which has been the subject of
aggressive protests by animal rights
activists, has also been reported to possess
stolen property. That drudge work leads to
a break in the homicide case when
Shephard notes that the circus’s previous
stops coincided with four apparently
unconnected unsolved murders, suggesting
that someone from the circus is the mur-
derer. Thin characters don’t redeem a
clichéd story line. (Nov.)The Dead Don’t Wait
Michael Jecks. Crème de la Crime, $28.99
(256p) ISBN 978-1-78029-120-8
Jecks’s fourth mystery featuring Jack
Blackjack (after 2018’s A Missed Murder)
takes the reader on an enjoyable jaunt
through mid-16th-century England. As
always, Jack’s priorities are woman-
izing, drinking, and gambling, until a
coroner shows up on his doorstep saying
Jack has been accused of fatally stab-
bing the priest of a parish east of
London. An old adversary, Dick
Atwood, pointed the finger at Jack for
his own twisted reasons, but while Jack
is able to persuade the authorities of his
innocence, he opts to stay involved in
the murder investigation, with the mys-
tery deepening after a local miller is
found dead and his daughter vanishes.
Jack’s staying on the scene strains belief
and leads to a
series of plot
contrivances,
but the novel’s
energetic pace
never flags as
Jack scampers
from one catas-
trophe to the
next. The
underlying
dilemma of
priests being forced to give up their
wives under pressure from Queen Mary
lends a more serious tone to the other-
wise madcap proceedings. Fans of
Elizabethan historicals will have fun.
Agent: Joanna Swainson, Hardman &
Swainson (U.K.). (Nov.)Agent Running in the Field
John le Carré. Viking, $29 (272p) ISBN 978-1-
984878-87-8
Bestseller le Carré’s first spy thriller to
focus on the Trump era disappoints. Nat,
a 25-year veteran of MI6, is afraid that
he’s about to be put out to pasture.
Instead, he’s offered the opportunity to
take over the management of a derelict
London intelligence substation, the
Haven, “a dumping ground for resettled
defectors of nil value and fifth-rate infor-
mants on the skids.” Nat accepts, and
advocates for a new subordinate’s covert
op aimed at a Ukranian oligarch code-
named Orson, who has close links to “pro-
Putin elements in the Ukranian
Government.” The straightforward
operation against Orson ends up
becoming complicated and includes an
obligatory mole hunt. Meanwhile, Nat
befriends Ed Shannon, an agent for
another branch of British intelligence,
who reveals himself to be a strident
opponent of Britain’s leaving the E.U.
and a believer that Trump is leading the
U.S. toward fascism. Le Carré (A Legacy
of Spies) telegraphs the book’s twist early
on, and Nat is colorless compared with
Magnus Pym and the author’s other
nuanced leads. This is a missed opportu-
nity. Agent: Jonny Geller, Curtis Brown. (Oct.)The Kennedy Moment
Peter Adamson. Myriad, $16.95 trade paper
(368p) ISBN 978-0-9955900-5-2
At the start of this slow-moving, if
high-minded, political thriller from
Adamson (The Tuscan Master), Oxford
don Stephen Walsh invites a few college
chums back to their alma mater for an
informal 20th reunion in October 1980.
Stephen calculates that the four mem-
bers of the old gang who accept will just
happen to be there to witness his antici-
pated promotion to Regius Professor.
Just like Stephen’s appointment, how-
ever, little goes according to plan when
his old friends join him for what begins
as a bittersweet stroll down memory lane
but morphs into a potentially life-shat-
tering conspiracy. The impetus for the
audacious plot comes from two of the
group—Hélène Hevré, a Canadian phy-
sician, and American Mike Lowell, a World
Health Organization epidemiologist—
who have devoted their lives to publichealth but become bitter watching five
million children a year die from diseases
that could have been prevented with
vaccines costing pennies. Like his charac-
ters, former UNICEF executive Adamson
clearly has his heart in the right place,
but too often his elegant pages have all
the urgency of a boozy late-night bull
session. (Oct.)★ One Night Gone
Tara Laskowski. Graydon, $16.99 trade paper
(384p) ISBN 978-1-52583219-2
Laskowski’s first novel (after Bystanders,
a short story collection), an evocative
and beautifully crafted tale of suspense,
features a girl and a woman, separated by
30 years, who each narrate their
entwining stories. In 1985 in Opal Beach,
N.J., teenager Maureen Haddaway:
“Vanished into the summer. And no one
cared.” In 2015, 40-year-old Allison
Simpson has been fired as a TV meteorolo-
gist in Philadelphia following the posting
of her public rant about her philandering
ex-husband on YouTube. Depressed and
humiliated, she needs to get away and
agrees to house-sit in Opal Beach, where
she forms a friendship with the manager
of a local coffee shop, who still mourns
the loss of Maureen. The two begin a
quest to discover what really happened to
the bright, troubled teen. The voices of
the two narrators are vibrant, as are the
descriptions of Opal Beach. At the heart
of this intriguing thriller lies a disturbing
awareness of society’s inclination to view
women as disposable. Laskowski is off to
a fine start. Agent: Michelle Richter,
Foreword Literary. (Oct.)The Murder of Harriet Monckton
Elizabeth Haynes. Myriad, $16.95 trade paper
(448p) ISBN 978-1-9124080-4-7
Actual documents from Britain’s
National Archives concerning inquests
into the November 1843 demise of
Harriet Monckton, an unmarried,
secretly pregnant 23-year-old teacher,
serve as the springboard for this rich
psychological crime novel from Haynes
(Never Alone). The author weaves
together snippets of testimony from the
official investigation in Bromley, Kent,
with fictionalized accounts from several
of the key figures in Harriet’s life—and
suspects in her death—among them the