THE KINGSBRIDGE PLOT

Upon returning to New-York (it's 1775) from London to take over his late father's medical practice, John Tonneman, a descendant of Pieter's (The Dutchman, 1992), is appointed coroner and soon runs afoul of a serial killer who fancies beheading redheaded slatterns and, for a change of pace, decapitates John's graying housekeeper. The search for the murderer intertwines with an attempt to poison General Washington (by doctoring his pease soup at Fraunces Tavern), and John—abetted by a mere slip of a girl who yearns for her own medical practice, as well as by a black man and a disgraced watchman—accosts the murderer/would-be assassin just as he's being hanged on charges of counterfeiting. Loosely based on the Hickey Plot and rendered with all the verisimilitude of a factoid TV reenactment. Simplistic character motivation and political explanation make this second in a series- -by pseudonymous coauthors Martin and Annette Meyers (the Patrick Hardy and Smith & Wetzon mysteries, respectively)—better suited to a YA audience.