The Devil's Cold Dish

April 11, 2016
Set in the summer of 1796, Kuhns’s uneven fifth mystery (after 2015’s Death in Salem) finds weaver Will Rees and his pregnant wife, Lydia, back at their farm in rural Dugard, Maine. Shortly after Will and fellow Dugard resident Zadoc Ward come to blows over political differences, Zadoc is found shot to death. As a suspect, Will is not permitted to help Dugard’s constable investigate, but he has plenty to do. The townspeople are inflamed by rumors that Lydia, raised in the little-understood Shaker sect, is a witch, and some attack her at the local market and sabotage the couple’s livestock. When a second murder with ritual elements seems to implicate her, they clamor for her arrest. Will ends up fleeing the farm after first sending Lydia and their younger children away to safety. Though overcomplicated backstory and plotting sometimes blunt the story’s drama, Kuhns gives it timely resonance with a thoughtful exploration of the way fears around religious difference can trigger suspicion, hatred, and even violence. Agent: Mitchell S. Waters, Curtis Brown.

April 15, 2016
In the 1790s, a New England weaver tries to solve a murder made to look like his handiwork. Will Rees is always eager to see something new outside the boundaries of Dugard, in the District of Maine. Ever since he helped solve a murder in Massachusetts on his last trip away, he's been having a hard time settling down to farming. Instead of the tedium of milking and haying, he'd rather work at his loom while he and Lydia, his wife, await the birth of their first child. His sister Caroline wants to move her family in with Rees, though the farmhouse is already crowded with Rees and Lydia's five adopted children. Her whining demands are hard to withstand, since Rees' hot temper is partly to blame for the accident that disabled Caroline's husband and caused her financial distress. Even worse is the town constable's news that a man with whom Rees had a public fight about politics now lies dead on a rocky hilltop. Although the constable is Rees' friend, believes him innocent, and wants his help in finding the real killer, a second and even more brutal murder implicates Lydia as well. She was a practicing Shaker who gave up her religion when she married Rees, but the ignorant and superstitious among the townspeople believe whispers that Lydia is a witch. Shocked when he learns who started the rumors and slow to accept how much some of his childhood companions have come to dislike and resent him, Rees must awaken to a painful reality as acts of vandalism threaten to turn into something uglier. An angry mob demanding Lydia's arrest forces him to take drastic measures for his family's safety, and when suspicion falls on him for more than one murder, he learns who his real friends are. Kuhns' fifth dispatch from the early days of a new nation, faster paced than the last installment (Death in Salem, 2015), builds mounting sympathy for its beleaguered leading couple.

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June 1, 2016

Will Rees is back on his rural Maine farm with his family. It is the summer of 1796, and work is brutal. Will and Zadoc Ward come to blows, and then Zadoc is murdered. Lydia, Will's pregnant wife, is attacked and accused of being a witch. Another killing further implicates Will and his family. The historical research is impeccable and the theme of religious persecution is highly relevant for today. This fifth book in the series follows Death in Salem.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2016
After a long absence from his Dugard, Maine, farm, remorseful weaver Will Rees returns from Salem to his pregnant wife and six children, in this fifth entry in the series. After Will engages in a public fight, his pugnacious nature is noted and used against him when a local man is found murderedand again, as more killings occur. Not only is Will under suspicion, his wife is also denounced as a witch; an angry crowd trashes his farm; his teenage son carries a grudge against him; his spiteful sister feeds the gossip mill; and his friends turn away in fear of associating with him. Luckily, Constable Caldwell is willing to help Rees find the killer, but it's questionable whether they can live through the process. Much brisk chasing about occurs, despite the limits of eighteenth-century transportation, and the characters are fully developed and compelling. While it's hard to fathom the depth of hatred the townspeople carry for Rees, the setting details and character development create a realistic, immersive atmosphere. Evil stalks the protagonist-sleuth here, as it does in the Abigail Adams mysteries by Barbara Hamilton and in Robert McCammon's The Providence Rider (2012).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)