Now You See Me, by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur)
When she finds a dying woman leaning against her car in a nearly deserted car park, Detective Constable Lacey Flint becomes involved in a case that turns out to be intensely personal but which she can’t actively investigate because she has become a witness in it. Soon a reporter gets an anonymous letter pointing out certain similarities between the woman’s murder and that of Jack the Ripper’s first victim, and it’s no coincidence that Lacey, an oddly reclusive young woman, has long been fascinated by the notorious killer.
Although she can’t investigate the case herself, Lacey is assigned to the team that is Detective Inspector Dana Tulloch and her partner, Detective Inspector Mark Joesbury. From the start, Joesbury is unusually hostile to Lacey, and it soon becomes apparent that he suspects her of being more than just a witness to the crimes they’re investigating.
And certainly Lacey’s behavior does provoke suspicion. A loner with no real friends, she leads something of a double life, picking up carefully selected men in Camden Town for sex and keeping a dazzling array of secrets from her past.
Gradually we come to understand what has made Lacey what she is as her dreadful secrets are revealed. Perhaps the plot is too complicated, and perhaps it relies too much on coincidence, but as the team races against time to fit together the final pieces of the puzzle, the tension mounts so high we don’t notice. It’s another masterful piece of storytelling from an author who has with just a few books become one of Britain’s top suspense writers.
Stagestruck, by Peter Lovesey (Soho Crime)
A fading pop star, Clarion Calhoun, is recruited to play Sally Bowles in a production of “I Am a Camera” at the Theatre Royal in Bath, and as hoped the house is packed on opening night. But no sooner has the curtain opened than Clarion collapses, clawing her face in agony as the audience watches in horror.
It doesn’t take long to discover that her stage makeup had been laced with caustic soda and that she may never regain her looks. Because the choice to cast her as Sally in the first place had not been a popular one, there is no end of suspects, as police Detective Peter Diamond learns when he begins investigating. The most obvious one is Denise Pearsall, the professional makeup artist hired specially to make up Clarion, who unlike the rest of the cast had little experience with the theater. And when Denise is found dead of an apparent suicide, that appears to wrap up the case.
But to Peter’s dismay, things prove not to be so simple. And the longer the case drags on, the more it becomes apparent that he has a deep-seated phobia about the theater that he simply can’t explain but which is making his life miserable. So, too, is an odd little man named Horatio Dawkins, who has been foisted off on Peter by his superior officer. Add to all that the ghost of a gray lady who regularly haunts the boxes, a few dead tortoiseshell butterflies, a superstitious lot of actors, and you get a Peter who is even grumpier than usual, as well as a very realistic glimpse into the workings of a modern provincial theater.
In past reviews, we’ve just about exhausted our vocabulary of superlatives when it comes to Lovesey, who once again proves himself hands down to be the master of the modern detective story.
Murder on Sisters’ Row, by Victoria Thompson
Midwife Sarah Brandt, the widow of a doctor and daughter of a socially elite family in turn-of-the century New York, takes a case delivering the baby of a young girl working against her will in a brothel. When the new mother asks Sarah to help her escape, she agrees to find a woman, Mrs. Vivian Van Orner, whose charitable work includes rescuing prostitutes from unscrupulous madams.
Sarah’s good friend Frank Malloy of the NYPD warns her against the dangers of becoming involved, and sure enough complications arise when Mrs. Van Orner is found murdered and her charity falls under suspicion. As usual, the social and cultural milieu and vulnerability of women in a corrupt society are explored with sensitivity and compassion.
