Review_FICTION
50 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ AUGUST 5, 2019
Review_FICTION
creepy and baf-
fling entry in
the American
Mystery Classics
series, originally
published in- The lives
of Sir John
Farnleigh and
his wife are
upended when
a stranger using
the name Patrick Gore appears at their
Kent estate and claims that he’s the real
Sir John. Gore alleges that as a child he
was on the Titanic with another boy, who
used the ocean liner’s sinking as a cover to
attack him and steal his identity. Gore
later believed his assailant and fellow sur-
vivor was dead, until learning that the
imposter was posing as Sir John. Sir John’s
tutor, Kennet Murray, who knew him
well as a boy, quizzes Gore, but before
Murray can give his opinion as to the
man’s veracity, someone’s throat is slashed.
Gideon Fell, Carr’s series detective, inves-
tigates the murder, the related question
of who is the real Sir John, and allegations
of witchcraft at the estate. This is an all-
time classic by an author scrupulous about
playing fair with his readers. Golden age
fans won’t want to miss it. (Oct.)
The Off-Islander
Peter Colt. Kensington, $26 (240p) ISBN 978-
1-4967-2341-3
Boston PI Andy Roark, the hero of
Colt’s entertaining debut and series
launch, came back from Vietnam with
serious PTSD and a simple lesson: you
just had to kill the people who were
trying to kill you. Decades later, he sits in
his office, reading Raymond Chandler
and doing routine, minimally interesting
investigations. Then his friend Danny
Sullivan, a mobbed-up lawyer, puts him
on the case of tracking down Charles
Hammond, the long-skipped father of a
wealthy, scheming beauty, Deborah Swift,
who wants to make sure that the missing
man had no secrets that would hurt her
husband’s accelerating political career. By
skill and intuition, Andy follows the trail
from Cape Cod to Nantucket, where an
apparently guileless and harmless old
hippy might be Hammond. Or not. But
Andy isn’t the only one looking forGlenlake, and younger twins, who also
expect to go to Glenlake, attendance there
having been a family tradition since Ian’s
great-great-grandfather gifted the Copeland
Academic Center. While Ian and Andi
were at Glenlake, Dallas Walker, a recently
hired poet-in-residence, disappeared.
Twenty-two years later, Dallas’s remains
are found in his car submerged in a nearby
lake. The current writer-in-residence, a
journalist whose course Cassidy is taking,
supports the class’s decision to investigate
Dallas’s death. The ensuing inquiry begins
to reveal problems in Ian and Andi’s mar-
riage, exposing secrets long kept from each
other. As their fears grow about what might
be brought to light, the suspenseful plot
builds to an unexpected ending. Keir
remains a writer to watch. Agent: Josh
Getzler, HSG Agency. (Oct.)A Legacy of Murder:
A Kate Hamilton Mystery
Connie Berry. Crooked Lane, $26.99 (336p)
ISBN 978-1-64385-154-9
Berry’s fine sequel to A Dream of Death
takes widowed Ohio antiques dealer Kate
Hamilton to Finchley Hall, a stately home
in Suffolk, to visit her daughter, a student
at Oxford who’s interning at the home.
Kate joins a tour group, whose guide
explains that the place “is famous for three
things—its fine Tudor brickwork, the mag-
nificent treasure trove discovered here in
the early nineteenth century, and... murder.”
The guide goes on to describe the four
unusual murders that have occurred there
over the centuries. Then the group reaches
Finchley’s lake, where the body of one of
the interns is floating, and Kate phones
her friend Det. Insp. Thomas Mallory, of
the Suffolk Constabulary, to alert him to
the grim discovery. Mallory later inter-
views a number of convincing suspects
with a variety of plausible motives. This
cozy has it all: well-developed characters,
clever dialogue, a gentle love story that
never slows the mystery plot, and insights
into the antiques trade. Readers will
eagerly await the next installment. Agent:
Paula Munier, Talcott Notch. (Oct.)★ The Crooked Hinge
John Dickson Carr. Penzler, $25.95 (288p)
ISBN 978-1-61316-129-6; $15.95 trade paper
ISBN 978-1-61316-130-2
Carr (1906–1977) is at his best in thisheavy. All a us are feeling it.” Other
eccentric kid voices include those of Dag,
a rebellious resident of a nicer suburb
who dotes on a tick-infested street dog,
and brain-damaged Midget, who talks to
bugs and wraps herself in flypaper. Kraus
makes an impassioned case for the value
of family with his marginalized cast of
characters, but the plot is one that could
have worked just as effectively in short
story form. The novel lives or dies by how
a reader reacts to Jody’s point of view. As
an entry in the literature of Halloween,
this is much more icky than eerie. (Oct.)Trap Lane
Stella Cameron. Crème de la Crime, $28.99
(224p) ISBN 978-1-78029-117-8
In Cameron’s so-so sixth Alex Duggins
mystery (after 2018’s Whisper the Dead),
things take an awkward turn for virtuous
Alex, the owner of the Black Dog pub in
the Cotswold village of Folly-on-Weir,
when prideful Neve Rhys turns up
demanding to see her cousin Hugh Rhys,
the pub manager. Upon seeing Neve, the
normally taciturn Hugh displays raging
fury, an emotion that Alex has never before
seen him express. Hugh storms off to his
home, to find that his lustful former lover,
Sonia Quillam, is there. Sonia still harbors
the delusion that he’s the father of her son,
who’s serving a murder sentence in a psy-
chiatric institution. Sonia goes missing, a
dead man is found in a pond near Hugh’s
house, and Hugh becomes the major sus-
pect. Alex and her lover, ever-patient vet-
erinarian Tony Harrison, help and hinder
the local police in their investigations.
Paper-thin characters, confused motives,
and a standard confession-spewing finale
make this one for dyed-in-the-wool fans
only. Hopefully, Cameron will return to
form next time. Agent: Liza Dawson, Liza
Dawson Assoc. (Oct.)Drowning with Others
Linda Keir. Lake Union, $24.95 (384p)
ISBN 978-1-5420-4145-4
Ian and Andi Copeland, the protago-
nists of this gripping psychological thriller
from the pseudonymous Keir (The Swing
of Things), have been sweethearts since
they met at Glenlake Academy, a prep
school north of Chicago. The successful
couple, who lead an idyllic life in St. Louis,
have three children: Cassidy, a senior at