Mr Campion's Coven

June 1, 2020
Albert Campion is a sometime consultant to the British Secret Service and also occasionally assists the London police. Beginning in 1940, Ripley's latest story moves through the decades to 1965, with the link being Albert's acquaintance with Evadne Childe, a hugely popular crime-fiction author. In 1940, Childe releases a book that centers on a murder at a seedy club in London's Soho district. But, bizarrely, six months before the book is released, a murder almost identical to the one in Childe's novel takes place at a Soho club. An odd coincidence, think the police, and, while Albert is asked to investigate, he finds no answers. The murder remains unsolved, and in the following years, two more crimes identical to those described in two more Childe books occur. Clearly, this is more than coincidence, driving Albert to determine the connection. Albert remains a winning protagonist, possessed of both eccentric charm and dry wit, and this time Ripley gives him a particularly meaty case, full of noteworthy twists. Another winner in a reliably entertaining series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)