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Summary
Summary
"Agatha Christie meets Patrick O'Brian in Finch's accomplished fifth whodunit set in Victorian England (after 2010's A Stranger in Mayfair ), the best in the series to date."
--Starred Review, Publisher's Weekly 9/12/2011
Charles Lenox, Member of Parliament, sets sail on a clandestine mission for the government. When an officer is savagely murdered, however, Lenox is drawn toward his old profession, determined to capture another killer.
1873 is a perilous time in the relationship between France and England. When a string of English spies is found dead on French soil, the threat of all-out war prompts government officials to ask Charles Lenox to visit the newly-dug Suez Canal on a secret mission.
Once he is on board the Lucy , however, Lenox finds himself using not his new skills of diplomacy but his old ones: the ship's second lieutenant is found dead on the voyage's first night, his body cruelly abused. The ship's captain begs the temporarily retired detective to join in the hunt for a criminal. Lenox finds the trail, but in the claustrophobic atmosphere on board, where nobody can come or go and everyone is a suspect, he has to race against the next crime--and also hope he won't be the victim.
At once a compulsive murder mystery, a spy story, and an intimate and joyful journey with the Victorian navy, this book shows that no matter how far Lenox strays from his old life, it will always come back to find him.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
James Langton's narration of the latest title in Finch's Victorian-era historical whodunit series captures the suspense and drama of a high-stakes murder investigation carried out at sea. Although veteran sleuth Charles Lenox is now a member of parliament and looking to leave his detecting days behind, he travels to Egypt following the murder of several British spies. Before he arrives, Lenox finds himself looking into a brutal crime onboard the ship transporting him through the Suez Canal. Thanks to Langton's ability to create unique voices, listeners will have no trouble distinguishing the many characters. And with a killer stalking the crew, Langton infuses his narration with tension, ably handling the book's final reveal-an essential requirement of an audio whodunit. A Minotaur hardcover. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Lucy along with his brother's son Teddy, who's making his first voyage as a midshipman. In this time of peace, warships often carry out what the crew think of as make-work duties. But the ship's routine is scuttled when the ship's second lieutenant is found brutally murdered. Captain Martin, aware of Lenox's reputation, asks him to find the killer. Given the limited number of suspects, the task would seem easy, but Lenox finds it daunting. No sooner has he narrowed down the list to the ship's officers than Captain Martin is murdered and Lenox is fortunate to escape with his own life. The ship continues to Egypt, where Charles must accomplish his task as an undercover agent and put paid to the murder investigation before he can return to his pregnant wife. A welcome change of scene for Finch's clever protagonist (A Stranger in Mayfair, 2010, etc.). The descriptions of life aboard a ship in 1873 are especially entertaining.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
Nobody knows a man better than his ex-wife. So Moe Prager's ex-wife, Carmella, is wise to this veteran private eye, accepting the fact that no matter how many times he marries, his first love will always be Brooklyn. "When you die, they should just bury you right here, under the boardwalk," she tells him in HURT MACHINE (Tyrus, $24.95; paper, $15.95), Reed Farrel Coleman's latest book in a series heavily saturated with local color. Since Prager has recently been told he has stomach cancer, that day may come sooner than Carmella thinks. But this stubborn old shamus is determined to do two things before his ashes are consigned to the sands of Coney Island: Attend his daughter's wedding, and find the person who murdered Carmella's older sister, Alta. Alta Conseco and Maya Watson, emergency medical technicians with the New York Fire Department, became pariahs after walking away from a dying man who was stricken at a trendy Manhattan bistro. Although Alta's death was clearly a retribution killing, her fellow E.M.T. (surely the murderer's next target) refuses to offer any explanation for their behavior. This silent treatment forces Prager to do exactly what we want him to do: Travel the length and breadth of the city talking to cops, firemen, gangsters and restaurateurs in their picturesque natural habitats. The Gelato Grotto in Gravesend is the kind of establishment that would welcome any and all looking for a place to die of their stab wounds. "The violence is one of the things that made this place a legend," according to the current owner, "It's sick, but it's business." Finbarr McPhee's Brass Pole, an Irish tavern near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, is a magnet for firemen, and there's a bar in the Forest Hills section of Queens where half the customers are working cops. Prager even knows an Italian restaurant in Bay Ridge where a man might share a meal ("cold antipasto plate, eggplant parm, veal parm, a big dish of ziti with red sauce") with a mobster. Just don't expect this grizzled Brooklyn native to get decent intel from any of the staff at the High Line Bistro, where the two E.M.T.'s left a dying man flopping on the kitchen floor. "Not to judge," but Prager has a hard time picturing these working stiffs tucking into a lunch of "Thai duck confit with tamarind and pomegranate drizzle." For someone who reads people by the places they eat, drink and make merry, that's good enough to make Prager postpone his death until he solves this case. It might not be "The Voyage of the Beagle," but Charles Finch's latest Victorian mystery, A BURIAL AT SEA (Minotaur, $24.99), is a rousing nautical adventure, set on an English ship awash with murders, storms and the threat of mutiny on its journey to Egypt. Charles Lenox, the gentleman sleuth in this beguiling series, had resigned himself to giving up his raffish avocation after becoming a married man and a junior member of Parliament. But in the winter of 1873, at the request of the prime minister, Lenox takes on the dangerous double mission of negotiating for British rights to the Suez Canal while secretly gathering information about French plans for war. Although the onshore bustle at Plymouth Harbor and Port Said is eye-catching, it pales beside the thrilling scenes at sea aboard the Lucy, a trim corvette outfitted for speed and agility. When one of the ship's officers is murdered in a singularly grotesque manner, the investigation becomes a baffling locked-room whodunit with the entire crew as suspects. An expeditious resolution may be critical for the sake of the ship's morale, but Finch's descriptions of life at sea are so fascinating it's a shame Lenox must bring this case to an end. You have to marvel at a woman who snubs the good Samaritan who pulled her from a train wreck, dealt with the ski pole embedded in her thigh and carried her to safety through a blizzard in the mountains 1,222 meters above sea level - and then demands that her savior go back into the storm for her wheelchair. That's how Anne Holt introduces Hanne Wilhelmsen in 1222 (Scribner, $25), the first novel featuring this prickly Norwegian heroine to be translated (by Marlaine Delargy) into English. There's nothing personal about Hanne's tactless behavior. She's also dismissive of the doctor tending her wounds and scornful of the priest who tries to comfort the survivors waiting out the storm in a rundown hotel. But when the priest is shot, this former cop finds herself drawn into a good old-fashioned murder mystery. Wherever Hanne shows up next, my advice is to follow that wheelchair. The assassin who calls himself Columbus and plies his trade in a devastatingly cool series by Derek Haas is back in DARK MEN (Pegasus Crime, $25), only this time he's not alone. Narrating in his usual dry way, this professional killer explains how he was lured out of foreign retirement and back to Chicago with his Italian lover, Risina. Someone has kidnapped his old "fence" (the contractor who sets up the kills), and Columbus is the only "bagman" (the hired gun who executes them) capable of bringing him back alive. Columbus fancies himself a force of nature - even in slumber "the tiger is still a tiger" - and he's thrilled when Risina shows an aptitude for his line of work. But this preening narcissist is also a consummate craftsman, and it's a pleasure to watch him go up against an adversary with a modus operandi even more diabolical than his own. The Gelato Grotto would welcome any and all looking for a place to die of their stab wounds.
Library Journal Review
Detective-cum-spy Charles Lenox is off to Egypt in his fifth historical jaunt (A Stranger in Mayfair). Expect intrigue and seafaring tales in this Victorian adventure. [Library marketing.] (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.