THE MISSING ITALIAN GIRL
Pope, Barbara Corrado Pegasus Crime (384 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 13, 2013 978-1-60598-408-7
An unlikely sleuth is drawn into another murder mystery in turn-of-thecentury France. On June 24, 1897, Maura and Angela, a pair of teenagers, help a Russian named Pyotr Ivanovich Balenov transport a corpse on a cart to a river just outside Paris, where they dump it. Now far away, hardworking teacher Clarie Martin rushes home after a tiring day, her only wish to spend time with her children and beloved husband, Bernard. But Francesca, an Italian charwoman at her school, buttonholes Clarie with a colorful and emotional tale about Francesca’s daughter Angela, who’s been “taken away” by an unsavory man who’s promised to marry her. Can Clarie help? At home, Bernard greets her with the news that he has finally secured a salaried job, and the couple goes out to celebrate for the first time since moving to Paris. But the plight of the “Italian girls” continues to bother Clarie, who’s lost a child and feels Francesca’s anguish. As the girls toil away in a shirtwaist factory, the sudden disappearance of Pyotr and a suspicious bombing worry Angela and Maura immensely, and the arrival of a police inspector with questions about Barbereau, the dead man on the cart, push them to the brink. When Clarie receives a letter notifying her that Francesca won’t be reporting for work since Angela has been killed, she knows what she must do. Pope’s third mystery featuring Clarie (The Blood of Lorraine, 2010, etc.) expertly doles out pieces of its complex plot, a picaresque puzzle with satisfying period flavor.
COLD FEET
Pullen, Karen Five Star (292 pp.) $25.95 | Jan. 16, 2013 978-1-4328-2637-6 The perfect wedding gift: strychnine for the bride. What’s keeping the bride? It turns out to be a fatal case of indigestion caused by a cup of herbal tea laced with poison. Stella Lavender, currently handling undercover drug busts for North Carolina law enforcement but yearning for a transfer to Homicide, is on the spot to find out whodunit and why after her granny, Fern, invites her to the nuptials at the Rosscairn Castle Bed & Breakfast. Wyatt, the innkeeper, insists it’s all a plot to close him down. He cites the maple syrup in the air-conditioner compressor, the ammonia in the water softener, the dead raccoon in the driveway and the spray painting on the inn sign. But Stella, relying on computer input from her ex and chats with the bridal party, 2668
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uncovers several other motives for killing Justine, including the fact that before she started calling herself Justine and had gender reassignment surgery, she was named John. Did the groom know? Did his parents, who operated an ultraconservative online church ministry? Did his sister and her gay partner? Did the best man, whose wife died of anaphylactic shock at a picnic six months before? Did the couple who filed a $1 million lawsuit against the birthing center where Justine worked? While she’s sorting through all the possibilities and sexual proclivities among the attendees, Stella’s undercover drug buys put her and her flirtatious granny in jeopardy, necessitating a short stay at a neighboring B&B, whose owner loathes Wyatt even though her son works for him. There’ll be one more fatality before a commitment ceremony and a sperm-donor pregnancy conclude Stella’s first murder case. The best thing about this debut is the chili recipe (tried and tasted) that ends it.
THE SIN EATER
Rayne, Sarah Severn House (272 pp.) $28.95 | Aug. 1, 2012 978-0-7278-8162-5 More than a century after some notable evildoing, an old dark house continues to cast frightening shadows upon its new owner. Benedict Doyle dreads his upcoming visit to the North London house he’s set to inherit on his 21st birthday, weeks away. Orphaned as a child when his parents died in a car crash, he was raised by his brisk Aunt Lyn and harbors memories of the house, called Holly Lodge, haunted by his great-grandfather. Fortunately, Benedict’s stalwart cousin, Nina, is on hand to support and motivate him. Nina’s friend Nell West, an experienced antiques dealer (Property of a Lady, 2011, etc.), has inventoried the contents of Holly Lodge and senses that they may include ghosts. Following a flashback to the 1890s that presents great-grandfather Declan Doyle and his sidekick, Colm Rourke, the tale thereafter jumps back and forth in time. Benedict knows Declan as the Mesmer Murderer, a tamer successor to Jack the Ripper, but the reader meets him as a vibrant young man seeking adventure. Together, Declan and Colm pursue the dark mystery of Nicholas Sheehan, a devout priest driven for some unknown reason to a hermetic exile. When Nell meets Benedict, she’s unnerved to see his eyes abruptly change color. She decides to keep this observation from her close friend Michael, whose discovery of writings from the time, by a servant girl and an abbot respectively, add another dimension to the story. Rayne’s 10th keeps suspense simmering with controlled, intelligent prose and a provocative weave of haunted yarns that sort themselves out in their own eerily attenuated time.
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