The Haunted Martyr

May 27, 2019
Set in 1902, Cameron’s workmanlike fourth Denton mystery (after 2014’s The Second Woman) takes Denton, a former Civil War general who’s now a successful novelist living in London, to Naples, Italy, along with his aloof lover, Janet Striker. Denton hopes Janet will recover from a bout with typhus while he researches a book on the city’s “spooks and spirits.” He receives visits from several eccentric characters, including an odiferous monk with an upper-class English accent, who claims he’s being haunted; a wily con man who offers Denton the chance to stay in a haunted palazzo; and a local policeman who hints that Denton should kill a couple of Neapolitan gangsters. The stakes rise when Denton discovers a dead man lying on some palazzo steps with his genitals cut off. When the victim proves to be English, Denton returns to London, where he indulges in some gun-toting derring-do. The narrative wobbles between the hero’s slightly off-the-rails sleuthing and his perplexing relationship with his lover. The lack of period details, meanwhile, means the action could be taking place anytime within a span of decades. This is one of the lesser entries in this series.