A Study in Revenge

Starred review from November 19, 2012
Conan Doyle fans will appreciate the Holmes/Watson-like relationship of Perceval Grey, who’s half Abenaki Indian, and deputy Archie Lean of the Portland, Maine, police in Shields’s excellent sequel to 2012’s The Truth of All Things. Early one morning in the summer of 1893, burglar Frankie “the Foot” Cosgrove meets a man near the city reservoir to deliver an unusually marked stone he has stolen at the behest of an unknown client. Cosgrove expects to be paid $500, but instead the man shoots him dead. In a macabre twist, Cosgrove’s burned corpse turns up after its burial in an abandoned house adorned with drawings of Satan and the message “Hell Awaits.” Grey, who turns his impressive intellect to the bizarre case, makes a nifty deduction based on Lean’s comments about Cosgrove’s living quarters. Meanwhile, a wealthy dying man hires Grey to look for his long-lost granddaughter, though the dying man’s family is more interested in a recently stolen heirloom. The humanity of the well-developed leads enhances the smooth-flowing plot. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, William Morris Endeavor.

Starred review from December 1, 2012
1893. A deputy and a private detective in Portland, Maine, investigate a murder with some very unusual features indeed. When the burnt body of a thief whose burial Deputy Archie Lean witnessed turns up in an empty house surrounded by occult symbols, Lean immediately calls on Perceval Grey for assistance. Grey is a half Abenaki Indian raised by his wealthy white grandfather. Well-educated and well-off, he has a passion for criminology. Grey has been hired by the dying Horace Webster to find his missing granddaughter and recover an heirloom stolen from his lawyer's office, a stone covered with mysterious runes that was left to his other granddaughter. The symbols, which resemble those found with the body, have been ascribed to both early Viking explorers and alchemists seeking to turn lead into gold. Grey is not the only one looking for the stone. Also in the hunt are Webster's grandsons, a white man raised as an Indian who thinks the stone is sacred, and Dr. Jotham Marsh, with whom Grey tangled in a prior case (The Truth of All Things, 2012). Grey and Lean soon realize that the present cases are intertwined and that Marsh may not be the only connection to the earlier crime that nearly killed them both. His blood up, Grey travels from the wilds of Maine to the libraries of Boston looking for clues that will reveal the truth. Erudite, mysterious and exciting, with a brooding, brilliant Sherlock-ian detective. The denouement is just as surprising as in Grey's first case.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2013
Shields (The Truth of All Things, 2012) brings Deputy Archie Lean and Percival Grey, a half-Abenaki Indian detective, back for a very strange case. It is 1893 in Portland, Maine, and Deputy Lean follows some ashen footprints that lead him to the body of a murdered thief. The body has been burned, and there are occult symbols on a nearby wall. Just two days earlier, Lean witnessed the burial of the same man. Something very peculiar is going on, prompting Lean to ask Grey for help. Grey has his own strange case. He has agreed to help a dying tycoon find his long-lost granddaughter. The man's family, however, is more concerned with the theft of an obscure heirloom that is decorated with mysterious symbols. As the two detectives investigate, they find links that connect all the cases. This is a compelling story that will take readers from the dreary streets of Portland to the upscale parlors of Brahmin Boston. A fine historical mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)