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by name. Just after Nicole tosses the baby
into Morgan’s arms, she jumps to her death
in front of a moving train. Morgan, in her
effort to understand what motivated Nicole
to kill herself, discovers that a baby died
under Nicole’s care when she was working
as a nanny. The baby’s mother, blaming
Nicole, sent her threatening letters, even
though the coroner ruled it was a case of
sudden infant death syndrome. Meanwhile,
Det. Karina Martinez, who earlier investi-
gated Ryan’s suicide and always believed
Morgan conspired in Ryan’s embezzlement,
investigates Nicole’s death; Karina suspects
Morgan of pushing Nicole onto the tracks
because Morgan was desperate for a child of
her own. The tension becomes unrelenting
as Morgan unravels Nicole’s story. Fans of
psychological suspense are in for a treat.
Agent: Jenny Bent, Bent Agency. (Mar.)
A Murderous Relation:
A Veronica Speedwell Mystery
Deanna Raybourn. Berkley, $26 (320p)
ISBN 978-0-451-49074-2
Veronica Speedwell and Revelstoke
“Stoker” Templeton-Vane have finally
decided to act on their long-standing
attraction to each other when an urgent
telegram from friend of the royal family
Lady Wellingtonia Beauclerk puts
romance on hold in Raybourn’s rollicking
fifth Victorian mystery (after 2019’s A
Dangerous Collaboration). It’s October 1888,
and Prince Albert Victor, the heir to the
British throne, has given a diamond star
marked with his initials to Madame Aurore,
who runs the Club de l’Étoile, a “palace for
debauchery.” Lady Wellingtonia asks the
duo to retrieve the gift, which could cause
scandal; worse, she has received anonymous
letters suggesting that the prince may be
involved in the Ripper murders terrorizing
London. Stoker and Veronica attend the
club’s weekly masked ball hoping to find
out more. Instead, they encounter the prince
dressed up as a woman, Madame Aurore’s
murdered corpse, and thugs who imprison
them in a warehouse. Raybourn delivers
fast-paced action, sexual tension, quirky
characters, and clever repartee, but she
also crafts quiet scenes—most memorably,
a meeting with one of the Ripper’s future
victims—rich with deeper emotion. This
entry’s bound to win her new fans. Agent:
Pam Hopkins, Hopkins Literary Assoc. (Mar.)
How did the series originate?
PT: I came up with the character of a
bored, middle-aged professor’s wife—
stingy, snoopy, but also gifted with
sharp intelligence and wit—who
starts solving mysteries. I thought it
would be fun if someone wrote a story
about her, but didn’t intend it to be
us; it was initially just a pitch for a
friend. Then the editor we pitched
asked us if we’d like to write it our-
selves, and we decided to give it a try.Where does the series
fit in the marketplace?
PT: We call it “Wes
Anderson meets
Agatha Christie.”
There’s a certain
Central European
quality we try to
evoke, found in the
novels of Joseph Roth
or Stefan Zweig, as
well as in Anderson’s
Grand Budapest Hotel, an homage to
the Zweig novel.
JD: Our protagonist resembles Miss
Marple to some extent. We also share
Christie’s narrative structure, for
example a closing scene where the
detective gathers the suspects, reveals
all their secrets, and eventually names
the culprit. There are no serial killers
or gruesome murders of the kind epit-
omized by the whole Nordic noir
trend. We went in the cozy direction,
which we knew from Christie’s novels
and personally enjoy.How does Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing,which is set in 1893 Cracow, resonate
for contemporary readers?
JD: Zofia is a woman in a male world.
Her social position is bound to her
husband’s, whose career she’s boosted
a lot thanks to her wit and shenani-
gans. But her own opportunities in
life are strictly limited because of her
gender. No matter how talented she
is, she could never become a police-
woman, for example. Sadly, these
injustices are not just dreary Victorian
fables; they echo what
we know about the
world we live in today.What inspired the
Zofia Turbotyn ́ska
character, and how has
she evolved?
JD: We modeled her
on some older ladies
we have known—
aunts, grandmas,
neighbors. While they
all had some quirks or flaws, they
were much nicer than the original
Mrs. Turbotyn ́ska. Piotr first imag-
ined her as much more unpleasant.
PT: We realized it would be rather
difficult to write even one book about
someone whom we don’t like at all,
not to mention challenging for
readers. One-dimensional characters
are also quite boring, I think. With
every new novel we want Zofia to
change a little bit, to learn something
about the world around her. But she’ll
always remain a haughty social
climber that sometimes drives a
reader crazy. —Suzanne Fox[Q&A]
PW Talks with Maryla Szymiczkowa
Murder in Cracow
Polish author Szymiczkowa (the pen name of Jacek Dehnel and
Piotr Tarczynski) makes her English-language debut with
Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing (Mariner, Mar.; reviewed on p. 47),
the first Zofia Turbotyn ́ska mystery.Jacek Dahnel (l.) and
Piotr Tarczynski