Folly Du Jour

May 26, 2008
In Cleverly's fine seventh 1920s historical to feature Scotland Yard's Joe Sandilands (after 2007's Tug of War
), the engaging sleuth refuses to believe his old friend and mentor, Sir George Jardine, stuck a knife in Sir Stanley Somerton, Jardine's former fellow soldier with an unsavory reputation, after a chance encounter at a Paris theater. Sandilands, aided by a French detective he worked with on an earlier case, Insp. Jean-Philippe Bonnefoye, pursues the real killer. The pair get a major break when Dr. Moulin, the pathologist assigned to the Paris morgue, suggests Somerton's killing was carried out at the direction of a master criminal responsible for a number of bizarre high-profile murders over the previous four years. While the payoff is a little too predictable and the solution doesn't match the setup as well as it might, Cleverly still manages to craft a puzzling whodunit.