Who Buries the Dead

January 19, 2015
In Harris’s satisfying 10th whodunit set in Regency England (after 2014’s Why Kings Confess), Bow Street magistrate Sir Henry Lovejoy asks aristocratic sleuth Sebastian St. Cyr to help solve the grisly murder of Stanley Preston, cousin to the Home Secretary. After severing Preston’s head, the killer perched it on an old London bridge known as Bloody Bridge. Sebastian discovers a metal strap near the bridge that’s inscribed “King Charles, 1648,” a clue that may connect with Preston’s macabre collection of the heads of historical figures. The presence in London of Stanley Oliphant, Sebastian’s longtime nemesis, whom he blames for the slaughter of innocents in Portugal, complicates the inquiry. The detective’s capable wife, Hero, assists him in unraveling the twisted truth as more bloodshed ensues. The solution, one of Harris’s trickiest, will appeal both to fair-play fans and those interested in a vivid evocation of the period. Agent: Helen Breitwieser, Cornerstone Literary.

January 1, 2015
A collector of grisly relics meets the same fate as his most cherished items in this Regency tale.When the body of a man parted most ignobly from his head is found next to a strap from the coffin of Charles I near the Bloody Bridge in London, it's definitely a case for Sebastian St. Cyr, former soldier, current Viscount Devlin and future Earl of Hendon. The victim, Stanley Preston, was a cousin to the Home Secretary and former prime minister, and the investigation of his murder calls for someone with Devlin's dash, good looks, golden eyes (so different from the St. Cyr blue) and entree into the best homes in London. Preston's murder also brings Devlin to some of the most unsavory neighborhoods-and takes him far from his reform-minded wife, Hero, and their infant son. The owner of a plantation in Jamaica, Preston was also well-known for his acquisition of odd souvenirs of history, including, it's rumored, the head of Oliver Cromwell. Now that someone apparently enticed Preston to the bridge with the promise of an especially fine specimen, Devlin must work to sort out the roles played by a ruthless purveyor of ghoulish curios, a young man who might or might not be a relative of Devlin, the young soldier forbidden to marry Preston's daughter and the daughter herself. Sedate banker Henry Austen may have more information than he's revealing, and Austen's sister Jane has a secret of her own. But a link to Devlin's former commanding officer increasingly drags the viscount back into the darkness of his own past, and not even his aptly named wife may have the power to save him. Disembodied heads and royal corpses play almost as great a role as the living characters in the 10th installment of St. Cyr's adventures (Why Kings Confess, 2014, etc.). Even though a long-overdue face-off falls curiously flat, the complex, brooding protagonist still dominates the action.

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February 1, 2015

Regency London, circa 1813, is the setting of the decapitation murder of a wealthy plantation owner with possible ties to the deposed--and beheaded--Stuart monarch, King Charles I. As Sebastian St. Cyr and his wife, Hero, investigate the crime, politics, power-hungry family members, and the brother of Jane Austen all come into play in Harris's tenth historical (after Why Kings Confess).

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Starred review from February 1, 2015
When Stanley Preston, a wealthy merchant with family political ties, is found beheaded, Sebastian St. Cyr, Lord Viscount Devlin, is called to help. While he's repelled that Preston's wealth came from slave labor on Jamaican plantations, Devlin is more concerned about such a murderer on the loose in London in 1813. Subsequent murders, including another beheading, appear linked to Preston's. Among the suspects is Sinclair, Lord Oliphant, former governor in Jamaica, who made Devlin the unwitting catalyst in the brutal murder of innocent women and children years earlier during the Napoleonic Wars, an incident that still haunts Devlin and makes Oliphant his sworn enemy. Another suspect is Preston's banker, Henry Austen, whose spinster sister, Jane, while helping to care for her gravely ill sister-in-law, displays her keen observations and wry wit to Devlin. As Devlin's personal life has become richer and fuller, with his deepening love for wife Hero and infant son Simon, so has this novel, the tenth in the series featuring St. Cyr. With such well-developed characters, intriguing plotlines, graceful prose, and keen sense of time and place based on solid research, this is historical mystery at its best.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)