Publisher's Weekly Review
A real-life natural disaster propels Harris's excellent third Thomas Silkstone mystery (after 2013's The Dead Shall Not Rest). The odd behavior of wildlife, including a massive flock of geese flying overhead, tips off anatomist Silkstone, an American expatriate, that something is amiss in 1783 England. The county of Lincolnshire is overwhelmed by a huge noxious cloud, spread out "across the entire skyline... like an enormous wave." The choking fog is accompanied by acid rain, and is viewed by the superstitious as the devil's breath and a sign of divine punishment. As the "Great Fogg" afflicts more of the country, the medico has a number of murders to solve, including the brutal bludgeoning of two young children. Meanwhile, Silkstone's love interest, Lady Lydia Farrell, is desperate to find her lost son. Both literally and figuratively atmospheric, this will appeal to fans of Imogen Robertson's series set during the same period. Agent: Melissa Jeglinski, Knight Agency. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
New York Review of Books Review
JOHN REBUS is the kind of cop who isn't afraid to think, and what he's thinking in Ian Rankin's terrific new procedural, SAINTS OF THE SHADOW BIBLE (Little, Brown, $26), is that he and his ilk aren't long for this brave new world. Having decided that retirement wasn't such a hot idea after all, the Edinburgh homicide detective is back on the job, but feeling increasingly out of step with his younger, more tech-savvy and ethics-bound colleagues. "My town, my rules" was the mantra adopted by Rebus and those old cronies (the self-anointed "saints" of the title) who held themselves above the regulations governing the behavior of lesser cops. But that boast rings hollow when Internal Affairs opens an investigation into a 30-year-old case of dubious probity. Complications arise, as they always do in Rankin's painstakingly constructed plots, linking the old case with a suspicious auto accident involving the offspring of a high-profile politician and a crooked businessman. (The mothers don't count for much here, as women rarely do in this series.) In one surprisingly bold move, Rankin has shifted Malcolm Fox, Rebus's perennial nemesis and current Internal Affairs shadow, into a closer relationship - something dangerously akin to friendship - with his old enemy. "The whole system's changed, hasn't it?" Fox says, in one of their more intimate exchanges about the capricious nature of police work and those slippery definitions of right and wrong. Rebus doesn't really need the reminders. His apartment décor of cigarette butts, beer bottles, print newspapers and LPs of Miles Davis ("from the period before he got weird") might tag him as a candidate for the tar pits where dinosaurs from the 1980s go to die. But confronting the man he used to be has left him with a comforting insight - young dinosaurs are being born every day. MARTHA GRIMES HAS a dangerous sense of humor. She cracked it like a whip in "Foul Matter," her 2003 takedown of the publishing industry. The satire is even more barbed in this sequel, THE WAY OF ALL FISH (Scribner, $26.99), which brings back the best (that is to say, the worst) of those ruthless publishers, unprincipled agents, devious lawyers and difficult authors who make the book business so ripe for parody. The novel's imperiled heroine is Cindy Sella, a respected but naive novelist embroiled in a costly lawsuit with her unscrupulous former agent, L. Bass Hess, and his evil henchmen in the law firm of Snelling, Snelling, Borax and Snelling. Cindy sets the amusingly absurd plot in motion by leading the rescue of a tank of exotic fish in the Clownfish Cafe, thereby endearing herself to fellow diners Candy (who admires all creatures aquatic) and Karl (who feels the same way about books). These lovable contract killers, first met in "Foul Matter," plan to save Cindy from her dastardly ex-agent through an elaborate scheme of byzantine design, hilariously executed by a huge cast of Dickensian characters. The tone may be light - "How noir is this?" Karl complains of one gentrified setting. "Where's your fog? Your foghorns? Your miasma?" - but Grimes's notion of farce is positively lethal. THERE'S TOO MUCH sentimental gush and not enough guts and gore in THE DEVIL'S BREATH (Kensington, paper, $15), the latest entry in Tessa Harris's uneven but fascinating series featuring Dr. Thomas Silkstone, an American anatomist struggling to pursue his mystifying profession of forensic science in the imperfectly enlightened society of 18th-century England. Harris is at her vivid best describing in precise, fearsome detail the "Great Fogg," the clouds of noxious poison gas that swept across Europe in 1783, darkening the sky, destroying crops and snatching the breath of men, women and children. Dashing between his London laboratory and his ladylove's country estate, Thomas works feverishly to determine the cause of this airborne plague and find a cure. The ignorance and superstition of the age hamper his work, but so does the robotic behavior of the stock characters around him. As if to compensate, Harris offers revoltingly graphic glimpses of London, where erudite men think deep thoughts but have yet to discover the benefits of sanitation. THE DANISH AUTHOR Jussi Adler-Olsen revisits his favorite topics of captivity and torture in THE PURITY OF VENGEANCE (Dutton, $26.95), a sordid tale of "unwanted pregnancy, abortion, rape, unjust confinement to mental asylums and compulsory sterilization" inspired by actual events during a dark period of Danish history. Ah, but there's more, so much more in this frenzied thriller: homicide by poison, scalpel and hammer, multiple nail-gun murders, a sulfuric acid attack, displays of putrefying body parts and the splendid Grand Guignol spectacle of a dinner party (complete with place cards) for five (or is it six?) corpses. Carl Morck, the homicide cop charged with making sense of all this gaudy material, is a bit of a joker himself. More a bad-tempered grouch than a brooding hero in the classic Scandinavian mode, he presides over Department Q, an eccentric cold case unit staffed with personnel rejects and relegated to the basement of Copenhagen's police headquarters. It's a strange world down below and not to be taken too seriously; but still, there's never a dull moment in the cellar.
Library Journal Review
This third stunning entry (after The Dead Shall Not Rest) features the cataclysmic 1783 volcanic eruption that transfixed Iceland and northern Europe. Dr. Silkstone must use scientific reasoning to fight crime and quell hysteria. Enhancement: glossary and author's notes. Perfect book club fodder. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.