“The Arsenic Labyrinth,” by Martin Edwards (Poisoned Pen Press, 291 pages, $24.95)
If you want to catch a killer you need to look at the victim and figure out why someone would want her dead. That old piece of police advice eventually leads Cumbria Cold Case Detective Inspector Hannah Scarlett to the door of the murderer in this wonderfully convoluted case with more zigs and zags than the labyrinth created decades ago by arsenic miners in the local fells.
Emma Bestwick was an unremarkable 30-year-old woman with few lasting passions whose disappearance was mourned by few. Most people figured she got bored and moved on. Then on the 10th anniversary of her disappearance a drifter with a passion for Victorian literature and a knack for sweet-talking women out of their life savings shows up in town and makes a phone call to a local journalist that rekindles the investigation.
Aided – and distracted in ways she’d rather not admit – by historian Daniel Kind, Hannah wanders through another labyrinth, one constructed of lies and half-truths by Emma’s friends, relatives and lover, all of whom seem more interested in guarding their own secrets than in helping the police. This is a book that has it all, as well as a vividly drawn portrait of the Lake District.
“All’s Well That Ends,” by Gillian Roberts (Ballantine, 255 pages, $23.95)
Schoolteacher Amanda Pepper, long a fixture at Philly Prep, a not terribly elite Philadelphia prep school, is also working part- time as an apprentice private investigator, and her two career paths converge in this adroitly plotted mystery.
Phoebe Ennis, one-time stepmother to Amanda’s best friend Sasha, has committed suicide with no apparent motive, and Sasha asks the ever-skeptical Amanda to snoop around a little. But when a second woman is found dead in Phoebe’s house, Amanda begins to agree with her friend that perhaps her larger-than-life stepmother was murdered.
Meanwhile, funds collected by the students at Philly Prep to aid Katrina victims have gone missing; Amanda’s Louisiana-born husband C.K. MacKenzie is concerned about his family, who lost everything in the wake of the hurricane; and some of Amanda’s students are getting in over their heads in a high-stakes poker game.
What makes this series so worthwhile is the witty social commentary that runs throughout each book as well as the warmth and humanity of characters like Amanda and C.K. Sadly, this 14th installment is also the last, as the author is moving on to other things.
“Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis,” by Cara Black (Soho, 294 pages, $23)
One night Aimee Leduc, a hip, hard-working young computer security expert, is directed by a frantic phone call to the courtyard of her fashionable apartment house on the Ile Saint-Louis, an island on the Seine in the very heart of Paris. There she finds an abandoned infant, whom she takes in until she can locate the mother. To her surprise, she is soon smitten with the helpless baby, as are her friends Rene, a proud and dapper dwarf who is also her business partner, and Michou, her transvestite neighbor.
Meanwhile, a student who is descended from Polish royalty goes on the run from the police and the environmentalist group that believes he has betrayed it. His path soon crosses Aimee’s as she scours the city, searching for answers to a growing number of questions. The author skillfully ratchets up the suspense as the storylines converge, culminating in a breathless chase through the sewers of Paris.
And if its expert plotting and intense characterizations aren’t enough, the book is absolutely drenched with the sights, sounds and smells of Paris and will surely be treasured by every Francophile lucky enough to read it.
Tom and Enid Schantz write a monthly column on new mystery releases.
