Tuesday, April 9, 2013

A Study In Revenge-Kieran Shields

A Study In Revenge


Kieran Shields

Crown, Jan 8 2013, $25.00

ISBN: 9780307985767



In 1893 in Portland, Maine Police Deputy Marshal Archie Lean follows the ashen footprints into the house until he finds the burned corpse of Frankie “The Foot” Cosgrove sitting in a chair. On the outside door written with ash and blood is a face with words “Hell Awaits” above it. Lean saw the victim buried a couple days earlier without any burns. At the gravesite, the empty coffin looks like it was busted from inside.



Lean asks hybrid Abenaki-Caucasian criminalist Perceval Grey to assist him in solving the strange homicide. Grey agrees to help although he already promised dying wealthy tycoon Horace Webster to locate his missing granddaughter Maddy. The rest of the Webster family has no interest in locating a missing heir except for her sister Phebe; instead the Webster clan prefers Grey focus on finding a missing heirloom. The deeper the two men dig into the cases, increasingly they believe them connected.



The second Lean-Grey collaboration (see Truth of All Things) is a great historical police procedural that once again enables armchair readers to believe they are in late nineteenth century Portland and to a lesser degree Boston anchored by real persona like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Action-packed, the taut storyline is an enjoyable fast-paced read as the two detectives will remind readers of a different Holmes partnership as they work to find the missing link.



Harriet Klausner

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