Ruined Stones

May 1, 2017
Set during WWII, this sequel to 2016’s The Guardian Stones from Reed (the joint pseudonym of Eric Mayer and Mary Reed) lacks the interesting characters and plotting that have been consistent hallmarks of their John, the Lord Chamberlain series (Murder in Megara, etc.). Grace Baxter, a village constable’s daughter now serving in the women’s branch of the British Army, has arrived in Newcastle to assist a force that’s shorthanded due to the war. On her first day on the job, Grace looks into the death of an unidentified woman who apparently hit her head against an altar in the ruins of a Roman temple. Grace’s superior officer believes that the victim probably tripped in the dark, but Grace is intrigued that the body appears to have been posed to simulate a swastika. Grace, “a country woman, one filled by her grandmother with folk wisdom,” recognizes the arrangement of the woman’s limbs, the direction reversed from the familiar Nazi design, as a symbol of good fortune. Other authors have done a better job of setting murder mysteries during wartime.

May 1, 2017
A policeman's daughter is assigned to the police auxiliary of the much-depleted force in Newcastle-on-Tyne during World War II.Sgt. Joe Baines, who doesn't think women belong in police work, passes Grace Baxter on to Constable Wallace, who's come out of retirement, and Wallace hands Grace the case of an unidentified woman found dead in the ruins of a Roman temple. The sketch shows her body lying in the shape of a reverse swastika, but Wallace thinks she just fell that way after tripping and hitting her head on a stone. Knocking on doors gets Grace nothing but some gossip about Mr. Rutherford, who's fascinated by the ruins and reportedly dabbles in arcane matters. Grace's landlady, Mavis, who works at the Vickers plant while her husband is away, is the subject of gossip because she loves to dance and is often seen with Dutch refugee Hans van der Berg. Grace isn't taken seriously until the body of Mavis' husband, Ronald Arkwright, an ex-convict who'd been busy making contact with his old pals, is found in the same spot. Ronny had been furious to find Mavis with Hans, and only Grace's intervention had saved her from a beating. Of course Hans is a suspect, and his disappearance makes him look even guiltier. Grace has been making the acquaintance of troubled teens, nervous ladies, and gossips willing to reveal secrets about the poor neighborhood where she lodges. Although she comes from a small country town, the people are not so different, and she hopes that her experience solving a murder related to ancient ruins (The Guardian Stones, 2016) will help her again. An in-depth look at what it was like in England during World War II and how women took over men's jobs, leading to a social revolution that continues today. Plenty of interesting bits and pieces, but the mystery is not as exciting as that in Grace's debut.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 1, 2017
It's 1941, and the British war effort is in full swing, which means many jobs formerly available only to men have opened up for women. Grace Baxter is a new constable in the Newcastle police department. Her superiors, uneasy with the idea of women on the force, give her minor, relatively unimportant tasks, until a body is found near some Roman ruins, and Grace winds up investigating the woman's death. It could be natural causes, as Grace's superiors are inclined to think, or it could be murder, as Grace suspects. When another body turns up in the same place, its limbs arranged in the same eerie configuration (a left-handed swastika ), Grace's superiors still resist the idea of murder, and Grace is left on her own to find a killer. Reed (a pseudonym for the wife-and-husband writing team of Mary Reed and Eric Mayer) handles the wartime setting (rife with paranoia) and the woman-in-a-man's-world theme with equal skill. A fine period mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)