Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street

Starred review from August 23, 2010
Spencer (the pen name of Alan Rustage) gets everything right in his excellent eighth historical featuring Scotland Yard's Insp. Sam Blackstone. As 1900 draws to a close, the inspector is still in New York City, where he traveled to handle an extradition in 2009's Blackstone and the New World. When thugs kidnap reclusive millionaire William "Big Bill" Holt from his Coney Island home, where he's lived in an isolated, underground room for seven years, and hold him for ransom, powerful men in state government who don't trust the regular police put Blackstone on the case. With Holt's two sons having only three days to come up with the ransom, the pressure is on the English inspector. Spencer brilliantly plants clues throughout for the astute reader to spot. A plausible and resourceful hero complements a sophisticated plot, whose twists will remind golden age fans of John Dickson Carr's classic puzzlers.

September 1, 2010

Marooned in the United States, Inspector Sam Blackstone investigates the kidnapping of a business tycoon.

Since an attempt on his life seven years earlier, banker William Holt has lived in seclusion in his Coney Island mansion, running his business from an underground suite with the help of sons George and Harold. But one morning, his butler Fanshawe discovers the two Pinkerton agents guarding his employer brutally slain and the man known as the Wolf of Wall Street missing. Brooklyn's Inspector Flynn is eager to catch such as high-profile case, but instead the NYPD sends East Ender Sam Blackstone and his upper-crust Connecticut protégé, Detective Sergeant Alex Meade. Blackstone, still on the trail of an English prisoner who escaped justice with a well-placed bribe (Blackstone and the New World, 2009, etc.), is the perfect fall guy if the Holt case turns sour, as it instantly does. First Fanshawe vanishes. The case against Edward Knox, the shooter whose initial assault sent Holt into hiding, goes south when vital evidence disappears. Flynn finds an informer but is shot when he follows his latest lead. Even the ransom drop is complicated by the kidnappers' demand that meek Harold rather than solid George be the courier. As he hits a series of dead ends, Blackstone senses a plot more complicated than even cynical Irishman Flynn suspects.

The case of the banker in the bunker provides enough wit, puzzlement and class warfare to delight the most devoted Blackstone fan.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 15, 2010
Spencer serves up another enjoyable historical whodunit in her Inspector Sam Blackstone series. Its 1900, and Blackstone is seconded to the New York Police Department. All he wants is to go home to England, but, instead, he lands a high-profile kidnapping case. Big Bill Holt, otherwise known as The Wolf of Wall Street, has been taken from the steel-encased, closely guarded bunker on his Coney Island estate. Clever plotting, well-developed characters, and realistically drawn period detail make this a solid choice for historical-mystery fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)