The Eloquence of the Dead

Starred review from February 1, 2016
In Brady’s stellar second whodunit set in Victorian Dublin (after 2015’s A June of Ordinary Murders), the police have reason to think something’s amiss at the home of pawnbroker Ambrose Pollock after a constable sees his sister, Phoebe, returning drunk to the Pollock residence late one night. The next morning, the police break into Ambrose’s ground-floor shop, where they find him sitting in his customary chair with his head beaten in. There’s no sign of Phoebe, who becomes the chief suspect in her brother’s murder. Det. Sgt. Joe Swallow, who has a track record of cracking tough cases (but without getting the promotions his successes merit), investigates. Meanwhile, Lady Margaret Gessel is forced to sell her estate under a new law designed to pacify the Irish by making the less-well-off property owners. Lady Margaret’s plight is clearly somehow connected to the violence, but Brady delays the reveal for maximum impact. The astute Swallow is a particularly well-rounded lead, and he’s matched with a complex, but logical, page-turner of a plot.

January 15, 2016
A police detective in Victorian-era Dublin catches another case with political ramifications, in a novel by a former editor of the Irish Times. When pawnbroker Ambrose Pollock is murdered in his shop and his sister is nowhere to be found, the police take a beating in the press. The bad publicity is especially painful for Sgt. Joe Swallow, a star in the special plainclothes G-Division whose talents have not yet resulted in the promotion he deserves, perhaps because he's a Catholic in a country still ruled by Great Britain. The pawnbroker has been dead for some time, and clues suggest that his sister may have been involved, but a meeting with an old acquaintance at Joe's painting class links the late Mr. Pollock to another crime. Joe recently ended his relationship with the widow Maria Walsh. Her sister, who teaches the class, is engaged to a friend of his, medical examiner Dr. Harry Lafeyre, and is protective of Maria's claim on Joe. Pupils in the class include old friend Katherine Greenberg, who runs an antiques shop with her father. After Katherine reports that a woman brought in some Greek coins and sold them for a low price, Joe walks in on two men trying to rob the shop and demanding to know who sold the coins. He learns that both the coins and a large amount of engraved silver plate found in the murdered pawnbroker Pollock's cellar came from the Gessel estate, which was recently sold to its tenant farmers under a scheme whereby the government buys the property and allows the tenants to keep the land they farmed. Now that it appears someone's been skimming from various estates, Joe travels to London looking for a person with high authority and enough money to hire the assassins who must be involved. The second case for the talented, complicated Swallow (A June of Ordinary Murders, 2015) again spins a fine mystery out of political corruption in 1880s Dublin.

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March 1, 2016
In his second Joe Swallow mystery (following A June of Ordinary Murders, 2015), Brady returns to Victorian Dublin. A pawnbroker has been murdered, and his missing sister seems to be to blame. Soon, however, Swallow and his colleagues on the Dublin PD learn of some unusual items that have been making the rounds of the city's antiques and secondhand stores. They also learn of potential fraud in how the estates that are being turned over to the people as a part of the Irish Land Acts are being recorded. Exposing the fraud could mean fomenting unrest in an already difficult moment in Irish history. A man ahead of his time, Swallow works nights so he can attend art class. When he's attracted to a classmate, he does not concern himself with the fact that she is Jewish. A strong follow-up for this historical series that will likely appeal to fans of Anne Perry.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)