Scarlet Widow

July 25, 2016
Set in the 1750s, this middling series launch from Edgar-finalist Masterton (Trauma) has some clever touches, but the whole is less than the sum of its parts. After a slow start, apothecary Beatrice Scarlet leaves England for New Hampshire with her new minister husband, Francis, only to find that the community he’s serving has been plagued by a series of baffling deaths. First, five pigs are found dead, with no obvious cause; broken pieces of mirrors placed on the animals’ tongues suggest a Satanic ceremony, according to Francis. Fears of witchcraft escalate when the killer moves on to claim multiple human lives, including those of three enslaved African men, who are burned to death and hung from a barn’s rafters, and a white man, whose body is dissolved in vitriol. Beatrice is sure there’s a rational explanation for the killings, despite the discovery of cloven hoofprints, which her neighbors believe were made by the devil himself. The means by which she identifies the killer may disappoint some readers.

October 1, 2016
Master of horror Masterton begins his new paranormal historical-mystery series by introducing the main character, Beatrice Scarlet. To acquaint the audience with Beatrice, we follow through her childhood and into her marriage. The mystery begins after Beatrice and her husband have started their lives in the New World. Strange occurrences begin to happenpigs fall ill, horses start dying, and soon people begin to get murdered as well. As the core of the novel takes place in a Puritan settlement in New England, witchcraft, Satan, and demons are frequently mentioned as the cause of the village's distress. Beatrice is not convinced that it is truly the work of the devil, but trying to convince her husband and neighbors of this proves difficult. Although there is something creepy and unsettling about individuals who truly believe that Satan could be around the next corner, the suspense of the story is mostly in the mystery. Beatrice is a fully developed character who will be fascinating to watch solve mysteries through the course of the series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)