Enter Pale Death

Starred review from October 6, 2014
British author Cleverly’s excellent 12th whodunit featuring Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Joe Sandilands (after 2013’s A Spider in the Cup) offers her sleuth a number of genuinely baffling crimes to solve. In June 1933, Sir James Truelove, a government minister expected to become the next Home Secretary and thereby Sandilands’s new boss, asks him to help retrieve a pair of family portraits that are up for sale at a London auction house. Truelove hopes that the presence of a uniformed copper will deter other bidders. Despite misgivings about whether he’s been given the full story, Sandilands complies and lands the artwork. Meanwhile, an anonymous letter writer advises Sandilands to look beyond the official verdict of “death by misadventure” of a titled lady killed by a dangerous stallion in the stables at Truelove’s family estate in Cambridge three months earlier. A 16-year-old girl’s suicide by drowning and an unreported theft, both dating to 1908, raise the stakes. Cleverly manages to pull everything together logically, with more than a few surprises. Agent: Juliet Burton, Juliet Burton Literary Agency (U.K.).

November 1, 2014

It's 1933, and Assistant Commissioner Joe Sandilands investigates the "death by misadventure" of the wife of Sir James Truelove, who is soon to be home secretary and in charge of all police forces in Britain. Dorcas Joliffe, Joe's significant other, is a protegee of Sir James, so Joe has to walk a very fine line. This is Sandilands's 12th adventure after 2013's A Spider in the Cup.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2014
Joe Sandilands (A Spider in the Cup, 2013), Scotland Yard detective and self-described troublemaker, knows he's entering quicksand when he explores an anonymous letter's allegations that Lady Lavinia Truelove's supposed accidental death was foul play connected to a decades-old murder on her Suffolk estate. Sandilands can't tolerate any suspicion that he is involved in a cover-up because of his reluctant connections to Lady Truelove's widower, rising political star James Truelove. (Truelove funds the academic pursuits of Joe's lady love, Dorcas Joliffe, and he's expected to be the new home secretary, which would make him Joe's boss.) His only hope for preserving his and Dorcas' careers and determining the allegation's credibility is to investigate the case himself, off the books. In Suffolk, Sandilands finds a complex web of upstairs-downstairs relationships harboring high-stakes secrets, with an unexpected connection to Dorcas, and the whodunit evolves into an expertly crafted locked-room mystery. Sandilands' many fans, and readers who love Downton Abbey, Rennie Airth, and Charles Todd, will revel in this elegant, intricately woven mystery set in the early twentieth century.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)