A Mask of Shadows

April 30, 2018
Set in Edinburgh in 1889, de Muriel’s effective third paranormal mystery (after 2017’s A Fever of the Blood) puts Adolphus “Nine Nails” McGray and his partner, Insp. Ian Frey, the members of the Commission for the Elucidation of Unsolved Cases Presumably Related to the Odd and Ghostly, on the trail of a banshee that has been haunting a production of Macbeth starring theater legends Ellen Terry and Henry Irving. The banshee leaves behind some ominous messages written in blood, which hint that a murder will be committed on the play’s opening night—and which may be part of a scheme to terrorize Terry, who finds a bucket of bloody brains in her dressing room. Given that ticket sales have been lagging, the investigators consider the theory that the unsettling events may simply be a ploy to generate publicity. Their inquiry also ends up involving Terry and Irving’s assistant, Dracula creator Bram Stoker. While Nicholas Meyer’s The West End Horror did a better job of setting a murder case among real-life Victorian actors, de Muriel continues to make his offbeat series concept work. X-Files fans will be pleased. Agent: Maggie Hanbury, Hanbury Agency (U.K.).

May 15, 2018
Historical-mystery novelist De Muriel (A Fever of the Blood, 2017) focuses here on an actual production of Macbeth in 1889. Bram Stoker, a soon-to-be horror novelist and then stage manager, famous actress Ellen Terry, and producer Henry Irving teamed up to bring the play to London and Edinburgh audiences that year. De Muriel seizes on this fact, and on the well-documented details of Victorian stagecraft, to expand the superstitions surrounding the Scottish play, as actors even now refer to Macbeth (hoping to avert the curse supposedly connected to mentioning the play's title), into a mystery involving four onstage and backstage murders. Former Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Frey again works with Nine-Nails McGray in Edinburgh, as warnings written in blood, near-disasters, and actual murders pile up. The action is fast and furious, and the details fascinating, including Ellen Terry's being unable to wash her Lady Macbeth hands clean because the Victorian concoction of syrup and cochineal dye wouldn't disappear, and Bram Stoker's notorious fear of the dark. A treat for fans of theater-based mysteries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)