The Infidel Stain

Starred review from January 18, 2016
Set around 1840, Carter’s outstanding second whodunit reunites Jeremiah Blake and William Avery, who tackled a baffling mystery a few years earlier in India in 2015’s The Strangler Vine. Avery, a former army captain who has returned home to England with his pregnant wife, responds to a summons from Blake, a private inquiry agent in London. Viscount Allington, a philanthropist and member of the new Tory government, wants the pair to look into two grisly murders that the police have neglected. Printers Nat Wedderburn and Matthew Blundell were butchered in their workplaces, their corpses displayed as if part of some ritual. The politician hopes that solving the crimes will serve to bolster the lower classes’ faith in the establishment and counter the growing appeal of the Chartists, who demand that all Englishmen have the right to vote. Carter excels at incorporating the volatile politics of the time into her cleverly constructed plot, which repeatedly confounds readers’ expectations while presenting moving scenes of the plight of London’s poor reminiscent of Dickens. Author tour. Agent: Bill Hamilton, A.M. Heath (U.K.).

January 15, 2016
An unconventional detective duo reunites to solve a series of gory murders in Dickensian London, a city where privilege dwells alongside grievous inequality. Carter's (The Strangler Vine, 2015) sequel to her warmly received debut delivers another historical mystery that takes a sideways look at British power in the Victorian era, this time the systematic oppression of the working class. But with less derring-do and more investigative work required this time around, her mismatched pair of "private inquiry agents" now bear closer comparison to another couple of London sleuths, Holmes and Watson. Capt. William Avery, an ex-military man-turned-country squire, is both a decent chap and the innocently upstanding foil to insubordinate, free-thinking, occasionally-opium-nibbling Jeremiah Blake. Having achieved renown for their exploits in India, the two men are reconnected in London by Viscount Allington, a philanthropic peer seeking a solution to the recent slayings of two printers in the city whose horribly disfigured bodies were left draped across their printing presses. Victorian pornography and politics--notably the Chartist movement, an anti-privilege group, keen to gain the vote and "persuade the country that the laboring classes are respectable and responsible"--underpin the plot, and Carter stresses the urgency of reform through a pointed focus on the squalor and poverty of the British metropolis, a not-unfamiliar landscape of ragged children, pickpockets, bruisers, harsh prisons, and foggy streets. Blackmail, a possible Chartist uprising, and the machinations of the newly formed police force add to the drama, yet the pace of this new tale is sluggish, often bogged down in conversations among a sizable cast of characters, some drawn from history. The brio of Avery and Blake's first outing remains in short supply, but the bromance holds steady. Lacking the freshness and exoticism of the earlier story, this new Avery and Blake episode offers solid yet wordier, more predictable entertainment.

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February 15, 2016

Offering an evocative portrait of Victorian London during the formation of the police force and the infancy of the printing industry, Carter's novel opens several years after the events depicted in Edgar Award-nominated The Strangler Vine, which took place in Calcutta. Capt. William Avery has returned from India and is settled into domestic not-quite-bliss with his pregnant wife in the Devon countryside. When he receives a summons from the erstwhile Jeremiah Blake, who is investigating a pair of murders at the instigation of Lord Allingham (a philanthropist firmly entrenched in the social status quo), Avery is somewhat guiltily delighted to be reunited with Blake (his admiration for the latter carries shades of a bemused Dr. Watson). The two take a tour of the underbelly of 1840s London, investigating the seedy demimonde of pornography publishing, blackmail, and the rise of the Chartist movement. VERDICT Although breaking no new ground and lacking the exotic setting of the first book, this title's history is rich, the murders gruesome, and the dynamic between Blake and Avery will warm the hearts of Sherlock fans. [See Prepub Alert, 10/5/15.]--Victoria Caplinger, Durham, NC

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2015

Carter's first work of fiction, The Strangler Vine, brought together soldier William Avery and secret agent Jeremiah Blake in late 1830s India with triumphant results; it was long-listed for the Baileys Women's Prize and a finalist for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award. In this second adventure, our heroes are back in London in 1841, feeling distanced from their surroundings. They come together again with a bang when police hesitate to plumb a series of murders upending the city's gutter press.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.