Ring of Terror

Starred review from July 3, 1995
Set more along the lines of a lean spy novel than a police procedural, veteran Gilbert's latest (after Roller-Coaster, etc.) propels young Luke Pagan and Joe Narrabone of the Metropolitan Police into a web of complex geopolitics one year before the outbreak of WWI. As trouble-making Russian immigrants spread terror throughout Edwardian London, Pagan's knowledge of Russian puts him on the case, and he and his wily partner Narrabone find themselves working with--and maybe against--the English ruling class (including a young Home Secretary by the name of Winston Churchill). As the two coppers track three suspected Russian revolutionaries, the Home Office seems to put politics over police work, even when the naked corpse of an immigrant bearing the notice ``Let Authority beware'' is found hanging in Victoria Park. But are the three Russian suspects really the terrorists? Are they even revolutionaries? Or is the Czarist secret police staging the attacks as a way of turning English public opinion toward deporting Russian emigres? Leave it to Gilbert to keep readers hooked while making his tale reverberate with all kinds of historical chords, including the invention of dynamite and the beginning of the modern intelligence agency.