Shadows of the Dead

Starred review from March 13, 2017
Set in 1921, Eldridge’s splendid second mystery featuring Det. Chief Insp. Paul Stark of London’s Metropolitan Police (after 2016’s Assassins) finds Stark in an awkward position. He has become the lover of Lady Amelia Fairfax, an affair that could cost him his job if it is revealed. When Lady Amelia’s ex-husband and a visiting American are murdered, the motive and, indeed, the main target of the crime are not at all clear: was it Lord Fairfax, a former colleague of Winston Churchill’s at the War Office, or the mysterious American? As he investigates, Stark begins to realize that the motive may be something far beyond a simple vendetta. Stark is a sensitive man with genuine depth, whose complicated private life sheds light on the realities of post-WWI London, including the striking inequities between rich and poor and the potentially treacherous political undercurrents that could reshape Europe. Cameo appearances by such people as a young actor named Noël Coward and an ambitious aspiring film director named Alfred Hitchcock add lightness.

March 15, 2017
In order to save the woman he loves from a charge of capital murder, must a veteran detective reveal their affair?London, November 1921. DCI Paul Stark is in bed with his secret ladylove, Amelia Fairfax, when she receives a call informing her that her ex-husband, the esteemed Lord Fairfax, has been murdered along with a guest, mysterious American Carl Adams. Stark's ethical dilemma is made no easier by an anonymous letter he receives identifying Amelia as the killer. Both men were poisoned, and Stark's superior at Scotland Yard, DCS Benson, points out that poison is traditionally a woman's weapon. Should Stark provide Amelia with an alibi that would vindicate her while exposing her to social ostracism? The secretary of state, who happens to be Winston Churchill, presses for a quick solution to the case. Deciding that he can't keep the affair a secret, Stark ends his affair with Amelia for the duration of the case. Meanwhile, Stark's trusted sidekick, DS Danvers, learns more about sketchy Carl Adams from his own mother, of all people. Stark and Danvers question Noel Coward in his dressing room. Both interviews implicate flashy American movie mogul Edgar Cavendish, who visits Stark at Scotland Yard and dismisses the notion that Adams was the target. It's all quite the tangled web: catching the killer is only the first step in exposing a dangerous conspiracy. The second case from Eldridge (Assassins, 2016) features colorful characters, crisp prose, and interesting nuggets of history.

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April 1, 2017
In the second DCI Paul Stark mystery, set in London in 1921, Lord Fairfax and an unknown American man are murdered in Fairfax's residence. Fairfax's ex-wife, Amelia, is the prime suspect; she's also Stark's lover (although that fact is not publicly known). The case is full of puzzlesthe identity of the American man is a big component, as is the motivation for Fairfax's murderand Stark soon finds himself uncovering a conspiracy that reaches to the upper levels of the British government. The author weaves real-life people and events into the story; Winston Churchill is a supporting character, for example. Eldridge also does a very nice job of making 1920s London feel as real and tactile as, well, whatever city in which the reader happens to be living. A solidly written mystery whose elements of romance and politics (Churchill thinks the Fairfax murder is politically motivated) make it more than just another early twentieth-century British mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)