THE ROOM WITH EIGHT WINDOWS

A retired English policeman finds his way back into trouble in 1930.

Part of former DCI Henry Johnstone recognizes that his battered body just won’t stand up to the rigors of regular police investigations. But from his drafty room in Sir Eamon Barry’s crumbling home, where eight tall windows set in an alcove let in the worst of the wind, his new job cataloging the late scientist’s library seems hardly less strenuous than chasing down criminals. Henry is grateful to his sister, Cynthia, for having arranged his paid occupation once the injury he sustained in his last case forced his retirement. He never would’ve left without a word to Cynthia if a stranger hadn’t crashed into his dismal digs and tried to stab him while he was in his pajamas. Having fended off his attacker with a poker, Henry then disappears, leaving Cynthia no choice but to call Mickey Hitchens, Henry’s former bagman, to find her missing brother. Mickey arrives at Cynthia’s gracious home with Bexley Tibbs in tow. Now a DI himself, Mickey has been charged with whipping newly promoted sergeants into shape, and Tibbs is his latest work in progress. Fans of the Johnstone-Hitchens franchise will be amused to see Mickey struggle to fill his mentor’s shoes in his efforts to make a proper copper of the intuitive and perceptive Tibbs and in the more urgent job of locating said mentor. To find Henry, Mickey has to revisit the very cold case of Sidney Carpenter, found dead in the street in St. John’s Wood years ago outside a home whose inhabitants vanished.

Puzzles aplenty for coppers young and old.