A Spider in the Cup

June 24, 2013
British author Cleverly squanders a promising premise in her uneven 11th mystery featuring Scotland Yard’s Joe Sandilands (after 2012’s Not My Blood). At the 1933 World Economic Conference in London, Sandilands has the major responsibility of protecting U.S. Senator Cornelius Kingstone, one of FDR’s closest advisers. Whether America will adopt an aggressive posture against Nazi Germany is still up in the air, making Kingstone’s safety a national priority for the Brits. Meanwhile, an eccentric group of dowsers digging in a Thames riverbank unearth a woman’s corpse, with her right big toe severed and a gold coin in her mouth. Sandilands delegates that investigation to a subordinate, even as he suspects a possible link between the woman’s murder and his primary mission. Those expecting a well-crafted murder puzzle will be disappointed, though as she has in the past, the author may well return to form next time. Agent: Juliet Burton, Juliet Burton Literary Agency (U.K.).

August 1, 2013
The title (chosen with a nod to Shakespeare) is particularly apt as multiple villains hide beneath the surface of this eleventh adventure starring Scotland Yard's Assistant Commissioner Joe Sandilands. Sandilands isn't happy when he's tapped to provide security for American senator Cornelius Kingstone, in London to attend an important economic conference at the behest of Franklin Roosevelt. After all, the senator has his own FBI shadow, an expatriate Sandilands knows from past encounters to be skilled in matters of securitythough of questionable loyalties. Sandilands soon realizes his own skills are needed despite the FBI: Kingstone's girlfriend has disappeared, and the senator is being threatened. It doesn't take long for Sandilands to figure out that the visiting dignitary is keeping something important to himself. Why isn't it easier to tell enemies from friends? Secret societies, economic and political power plays, and assassins on the lose share space in a convoluted but involving tale, marked by historical, cultural, and literary references, stiff-upper-lip dialogue, and occasionally surprising wittiness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)