The Amateur Historian

May 3, 2010
The grim fates of two girls separated by more than a century entwine in bizarre fashion in Cole’s ambitious debut, the first in a projected series. More than a century after nine-year-old Esme Percy dies in wretched, Dickensian squalor in 1901 in the ancient English city of York, eight-year-old Polly Markham, the child of well-off parents, is kidnapped in the same city. Two brothers, Rick Rounder, an ex-Yorkshire policeman recently returned to York and now a PI, and his older brother, Sam, York’s chief investigator, play major roles in deciphering the complex abduction case. Rick’s new career gets off to a rocky start as he shadows a straying wife and her paramour, while Sam’s troubled marriage and corpulence make him look and feel older than his 40 or so years. A devilishly complicated plot and the intriguingly mismatched brothers more than compensate for the overwrought descriptions of poverty-stricken York of an earlier era.

June 1, 2010

The motive for a Yorkshire girl's disappearance lies buried with another local girl a century dead.

Ten years after a domestic-violence case gone horribly wrong drove him from the police force, Rick Rounder is back from far-off Queensland. Accompanied by his bemused black girlfriend Naomi, he's determined to lay his ghosts and make his way by hanging out his shingle as a private eye. Chief Inspector Sam Rounder, who wouldn't be likely to welcome his baby brother back home in any event, has his hands full with the kidnapping of Polly Markham, snatched from outside her house by a man who killed the family dog. Even when the self-styled amateur historian identifies himself in a stunningly unforeseeable scene, his confession only deepens the mystery: He's taken Polly because he "wanted to put things right" for the death of nine-year-old Esme Percy in 1901. Can Sam Rounder's force find Polly before she's as dead as her spectral twin? Their investigation would be a lot simpler if Rick Rounder's very first case, the routine shadowing of Will Wistow's adulterous wife to gather evidence for a divorce, didn't keep getting him into waves of trouble from unexpected sources.

The cliffhanger endings Rick's adventures supply are likely to distract readers along with the Yorkshire constabulary. Yet Cole's debut novel rings so many fresh changes on the echoes-of-the-past thriller that even more readers will welcome the series it introduces.

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April 1, 2010
Rick Rounder returns to his hometown of York in northern England, sets up a private detective agency, and deals with his jealous brother, now the police chief, and his antagonistic former mates on the force. He thinks nothing of being hired to follow a man's wife, but things get weird when the husband kidnaps Rick and clues to a young girl's disappearance lead to a century-old crime. VERDICT With fast action, well-developed characters, a history lesson on York, and a suspenseful ending, this debut by a British journalist will appeal to fans of British crime fiction. [Library marketing.]

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2010
Redressing sins of the past leads to crimes of the present in the city of York in 2001. The 1901 death of nine-year-old Esme Percy, the youngest in a family of eight children living in squalid conditions, goes largely unnoticed until 100 years later, when the title character seeks to make reparations and snatches a young girl. Chief Inspector Sam Rounder briefly interrupts his search for missing Polly Markham to come to the aid of his younger brother, Rick, a former cop who took off to Australia after he was unable to prevent the tragic death of another young girl. Back in York two years later, Rick takes up work as a private eye only to find that he, too, is targeted for retribution. Intertwining the cases proves a bit clunky, but journalist turned novelist Cole evokes Yorks past vividly and sets up a realistic sibling rivalry between Sam, older and heavier with a failing marriage, and Rick, trim and fit with a stunning, dark-skinned Australian lover. A twisting and turning plot is enhanced by impressively researched history in this memorable debut novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)