Shroud of Evil

June 9, 2014
In Rowson’s absorbing 11th Andy Horton mystery (after 2013’s Death Surge), PI Jasper Kenton has been missing for less than 24 hours, yet Detective Chief Inspector Bliss of Portsmouth CID orders Horton to investigate. Horton, resentful that he has to pursue this mundane inquiry, calls first on Kenton’s business partner, Eunice Swallows, whose unhelpfulness just adds to his irritation. The next day Kenton’s locked car is found in a resident’s parking space outside a Portsmouth apartment building. But where’s Kenton? Embittered by a childhood spent in foster homes and his wife’s desertion, the short-tempered but tenacious Horton presses on after the case takes a dark turn. Meanwhile, Horton contends with hostile coworkers and continues his frustrating search for his mother, who disappeared 30 years earlier. The backstory can be confusing for newcomers, but a compelling protagonist and mounting suspense make the book hard to put down.

August 1, 2014
DI Andy Horton (Undercurrent, 2013, etc.) continues to complicate his job at the Portsmouth CID by probing his mother's long-ago disappearance. Horton's ticked off when his boss, DCI Lorraine Bliss, assigns him a missing person case. He figures private investigator Jasper Kenton has just gone off on his own, maybe with a lady friend, maybe with a client's money, and the only reason Bliss has her frosty knickers in a knot is that she's BFFs with Kenton's business partner, Eunice Swallows. Horton's perfectly plausible theory is scotched when Kenton's body turns up near the Isle of Wight's Northwood Abbey on a spot of beach owned by Lord Richard Eames, a political powerhouse who surely had some idea why Jennifer Horton vanished many years ago, leaving 10-year-old Andy behind. Eames admits knowing Jennifer at the London School of Economics but refuses to talk about his connection with the radical student group she may have belonged to. Horton can barely hide his distrust of Eames, who uses his connections to limit the scope of the Kenton investigation. Then Horton puts his job in peril by concealing his own encounter with beachcomber Wyndham Lomas on Eames' property the day before Kenton's death. Instead, he focuses on Kenton's dealings with his clients, especially Thelma Veerman, who hired him to keep tabs on her husband, Brett, an ophthalmic surgeon with quite a female following. Horton also looks into Kenton's strained relationship with his sister and his peculiar purchase of a boat right before his death. But all roads keep leading back to Eames, the man he most and least wants to investigate. Here's hoping Horton gets the goods on Eames soon so that Rowson can go back to the procedural puzzlers she does so well.

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July 1, 2014

Andy's latest case intersects directly with his personal quest to find his mother's killers. No. 13 (after Death Surge) in a series set in Portsmouth, England, uncovers long-held secrets from the Cold War era.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2014
When the body of local private investigator Jasper Kenton is found on the beach of the ultrawealthy Lord Eames' estate, DI Andy Horton is called to investigate. According to those who knew him, Kenton was a thorough, discreet, reliable PI, who, at the time of his death, was working for Thelma Veerman, seeking evidence of the affair Thelma was sure her husband was having. Andy figures the husband, a renowned surgeon, was the obvious killer because he had the most to lose. But the more Andy investigates, the more puzzled he becomes. He's especially wary of Lord Eames, whom Andy is convinced was involved in the disappearance of Andy's mother decades earlier. While the first two-thirds of this book is taken up with the sort of plodding police work that every murder case involves, as the story draws to a close, it becomes a swirling cyclone of action leading to a shocking conclusion that will leave readers eager for the next installment in this always-surprising series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)