A satisfying, engaging sequel helmed by an increasingly formidable female lead.
Gertcher’s super sleuths are recruited by a French intelligence agency to direct their considerable investigatory skills toward espionage.
It is November 1929, and high-spirited Caroline Case Jones and her unflappable husband, Hannibal, are luxuriating in their rented Parisian town house, shopping the designer showrooms, exploring fine-art collections, and working with Capitaine Inspecteur Soucet from the Sections de recherche de la Gendarmerie Nationale (an investigation unit) to solve a murder or two. But the political waters are churning in postwar Europe. Mussolini is in power in Italy; Hitler, although still a minor player, has begun amassing an increasingly dangerous following and has scored a total of 107 seats (up from 12) for his Nazi Party in the Weimar Parliament. The worried French want to place secret agents in Germany. Caroline and Hannibal begin an intensive course in espionage training; their cover story will be that they are rich American art collectors. On their first day of instruction, they investigate the death of a recent recruit whose body has just been discovered on the grounds of the training facility. But solving this mystery is tame compared to the dangers that lie ahead as Caroline and Hannibal navigate the subsequent four years, first in Germany and later in Italy. In this fourth volume of Caroline’s diaries, the world grows ever darker. In Berlin, the duo precariously socialize with higher-ups in the Nazi Party, gleaning ominous tidbits from conversations and rubbing elbows with Josef Goebbels and Herman Göring. Although Caroline maintains her usual frothy banter describing her daily fashion ensembles, food choices, and luxe accommodations, her diary naturally has a more somber tone than previous volumes. Gertcher, a meticulous writer who provides rich historical details, this time animates the rising political machinations and violence roiling the Continent in the first half of the 1930s. And his steady supply of dramatic action scenes and intriguing subplots propels the narrative to its final surprise.
A satisfying, engaging sequel helmed by an increasingly formidable female lead.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73514-597-6
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Wind Grass Hill
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Demands a careful reading and knowledge of the Victorian lady detective’s history.
A mystery that unwinds in reverse adds new twists to Thomas’ Sherlock Holmes–inspired series.
The new Charlotte Holmes novel continues the tense chess game that the gender-flipped Sherlock is playing with Moriarty and an incarcerated acquaintance turned villain. The events are narrated as a series of flashbacks interspersed with an interrogation in which Charlotte is under suspicion of murder. While her friend Inspector Treadles nervously observes, a senior policeman grills the unflappable detective about her recent movements. Even as she gives him a bland account of why she’s crisscrossed the English Channel in recent weeks, readers get drips of information about what she and her family and friends have been up to, all building to a reveal. Two other seemingly unrelated mystery subplots enter the picture, but it’s evident that new events and characters are connected to familiar ones from the past. With allusions to previous novels in the Lady Sherlock series and hat tips to Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem” and the Guy Ritchie movie Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, the plot can be hard to follow, especially for new readers. The consistently well-drawn characters serve as an anchor, and the occasional glimpse of Charlotte’s love for her family and her lover, Lord Ingram Ashburton, adds a needed touch of warmth to the clever but clinical jigsaw structure of the mystery.
Demands a careful reading and knowledge of the Victorian lady detective’s history.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9780593640432
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
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