Death in Salem

April 20, 2015
Kuhns’s solid fourth mystery set in the late 18th century (after 2014’s Cradle to Grave) takes weaver and private detective Will Rees from his home in Maine to Salem, Mass., to buy cloth for his wife, Lydia, but he’s soon detained by an old friend, Stephen “Twig” Eaton, who saved his life during the War for Independence. Twig’s beloved servant, Xenobia, has been arrested for the stabbing murder of Jacob Boothe, a prosperous Salem merchant, and he wants Rees to exonerate her. Not everyone welcomes Rees’s probing into Boothe’s personal and business affairs as he looks for motives for the crime. The killer doesn’t stop with just one victim, increasing the pressure on Rees to close the case. Lydia joins him in Salem and assists with his inquiries, even as she fears that he’s risking his life unnecessarily. Evocative descriptions of Salem, especially of the whaling industry, make up for a whodunit plot less crafty than the author’s usual. Agent: Mitchell S. Waters, Curtis Brown.

Narrator Susie Berneis evokes the eerie setting of Salem, Massachusetts, a century after the infamous witch trials. When a wealthy businessman is murdered, a slave of Jamaican descent is arrested, and her fiancé asks Will Rees, a traveling weaver who also solves crimes, for help. Berneis effectively portrays male characters as well as female characters, which is essential in a story with a male protagonist. Berneis juggles a wide cast, including a family of spoiled adult children, heirs to their murdered father's business. Rees has family problems of his own as the father of five adopted children and an angry teenager. Listeners are taken in and out of Salem's underground tunnels as Rees pursues the real killer. M.R. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine