Folly du Jour

May 26, 2008
In Cleverly's fine seventh 1920s historical to feature Scotland Yard's Joe Sandilands (after 2007's Tug of War
), the engaging sleuth refuses to believe his old friend and mentor, Sir George Jardine, stuck a knife in Sir Stanley Somerton, Jardine's former fellow soldier with an unsavory reputation, after a chance encounter at a Paris theater. Sandilands, aided by a French detective he worked with on an earlier case, Insp. Jean-Philippe Bonnefoye, pursues the real killer. The pair get a major break when Dr. Moulin, the pathologist assigned to the Paris morgue, suggests Somerton's killing was carried out at the direction of a master criminal responsible for a number of bizarre high-profile murders over the previous four years. While the payoff is a little too predictable and the solution doesn't match the setup as well as it might, Cleverly still manages to craft a puzzling whodunit.

Starred review from May 1, 2008
The first act of this new episode in Cleverlys Jazz Age series starring Scotland Yards Joe Sandilands begins with a crowd of ghoulish onlookers watching blood drip from a sarcophagus in the Louvre; it then moves ahead in time to an airport tarmac, where a blustery, somewhat fearful Commander Sandilands boards a passenger planean Argosy (four wings, three engines, two pilots and 13 passengers)bound for a Paris Interpol convention. Meanwhile, in Paris, the plan of another gruesome murder is taking form. Is there a connection? When Sir George Jardine, a retired diplomat and Joes mentor, is accused of nearly decapitating his enemy at a Paris music hall, and the bullheaded Commissaire Fournier of the French gendarmerie holds him in cruel custody, Sandilands subtly takes charge of the investigation. Cameo appearances by journalist Georges Simenon and entertainer Josephine Baker, along with a cast of believably developed supporting characters, build a steady crescendo of motive and opportunity until the surprising denouement reveals a troubling discordant element lurking in the very heart of the Parisian criminal justice system. This series and its hero age well: the perspicacious Sandilands exhibits an arresting combination of Mary Russells discernment and Chief Inspector Wexfords tenacious certainty.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)