The Gravedigger's Ball

August 1, 2011
Jones's sequel to 2010's The Last Confession gets off to a strong start. When Philadelphia homicide detective Mike Coletti visits the grave of police profiler Mary Smithson, who betrayed him in the previous book, in a doomed attempt at closure, he's surprised to meet Smithson's half-sister, Lenore Wilkinson. He's even more surprised when someone takes a shot at them. After the dust settles, they find Clarissa Bailey, who was showing Wilkinson the cemetery, dead in an open grave. At the grave's edge is a scrap of paper with a quote from Poe's The Raven; in a nearby tree is a "black, crowlike" bird. Coletti later learns that some scholars believe that the poem is coded evidence of its author's supernatural ability to cross between worlds. When Bailey's murderer claims another life, the popular press dubs the killer the Gravedigger. Jones maintains suspense throughout, but an over-the-top ending will please few.

September 15, 2011

A Philadelphia crime spree featuring Edgar Allan Poe.

Still in love with the serial killer who betrayed him, Detective Mike Coletti visits her grave at Fairgrounds Cemetery and is startled to see a younger, prettier version of her walking toward him. As Lenore Wilkinson, Mary's half sister, nears him, a gun booms and a bullet narrowly misses her. In a flash, her companion Clarissa Bailey falls dead, a snippet from a Poe poem lies beside her, a thin mustachioed man in old-fashioned garb speeds away and a raven lifts off from its tree perch and departs. Officer Frank Smith, on patrol, chases the mustache but winds up buried alive. The autopsy reveals a cryptogram tattoo on Clarissa's neck. Her husband explains that she was fascinated with Poe. Her obsession led her to a university scholar delving into Poe's reputation as a seer, ever searching for "a secret that would literally change the course of mankind." Before you can whisper "Nevermore," the scholar is pecked to death by the raven and a cryptic message promises that someone will be back to claim Lenore. As the Gravedigger's Ball, a fundraiser to underwrite cemetery maintenance, approaches, the cops must piece together clues from "The Gold Bug," "The Black Cat" and "The Raven," and Poe's stint as a gravedigger at Fairgrounds. Meanwhile, pretty Lenore, a consummate liar, battles her husband John; a young widower joins his dead wife; and a major confrontation with the Daughters of Independence results in a conflagration as the raven disappears in the distance.

An ineffective mating of police procedural, surreal horror and historical melodrama swaddled in lumpen prose from a seasoned author (The Last Confession, 2010, etc.) having a bad day.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 1, 2011
While mourning at the grave of a woman who stole his heart, betrayed him, and then was revealed as a serial killer, Philadelphia detective Mike Coletti is drawn into another deadly case. A shot rings out in the graveyard. A woman dies, and the next day a cop on duty at the graveyard is buried alive. The case centers on the half sister of the woman Coletti mourns. Her name is Lenore, and she's a member of a small group of history buffs who raise money to maintain the graveyard and revel in the dark, melancholy legacy of Edgar Allan Poe. As the body count mounts, the killer is dubbed the Gravedigger. Brief sightings of the Gravedigger are ominously accompanied by the flight of a raven, whom the investigators soon associate with another impending death. Award-winning Philadelphia Daily News columnist Jones deftly melds the dark legends of Poe into a modern police procedural. The result is a supernatural thriller that races towards an apocalyptic and frightening conclusion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)