The Devil's Feast

Starred review from January 9, 2017
mystery with possible political ramifications drives Carter’s superlative third Victorian historical featuring Jeremiah Blake and Capt. William Avery (after 2016’s The Infidel Stain). In 1842, Blake has been working regularly as a private inquiry agent for Theophilus Collinson, a man “quietly influential in London’s highest political and social circles,” but Blake chafes at being considered a hired hand and refuses a new assignment. Claiming that Blake was already paid for work unperformed, Collinson has the stubborn detective arrested and imprisoned for debt. With his sleuthing friend in the Marshalsea prison, Avery ends up having to take the lead when an MP, Charles Rowlands, is poisoned at a fancy dinner party at the Reform Club. Since the club is soon to be the site of a banquet for an Egyptian minister at a time when the Russians are trying to draw Egypt into an alliance against Turkey and ignite a Mideast war, identifying Rowlands’s killer is a national priority. Carter again has crafted an ingenious, fast-moving plot with emotional depth and plausible surprises. Agent: Bill Hamilton, A.M. Heath (U.K.).

January 15, 2017
Who is poisoning the politicians of London's Reform Club? Surely not its celebrity chef, Alexis Soyer, whose spotless kitchen is a miracle of Victorian modernity--those faucets with instant hot water! Those gas ranges with adjustable flames! It sounds like another case for famed investigative duo Avery and Blake.It's with a sense of panic that Capt. William Avery, the Watson to Jeremiah Blake's Sherlock Holmes, probes a mysterious death at England's renowned, gentlemen-only Reform Club in 1842. Accidentally present at one of Soyer's lavish private dinners and thus witness to the agonizing demise of a Whig Member of Parliament, Avery is asked by the club to pursue a discreet investigation, unfortunately without Blake (who has temporarily disappeared) to help him. Soon, upright but plodding military hero Avery is floundering, faced with many--too many--cooks and other suspects, from Russian spies plotting against a crucial upcoming diplomatic banquet at the club to Soyer's rivals, his suppliers, factions within the club, and feuders in the kitchen. This is Carter's (The Infidel Stain, 2016, etc.) third Avery and Blake adventure, and once again the author revels in her research, evoking another Dickensian vista of Victorian London where the food is adulterated by chemicals, arsenic is an everyday tonic, the rich dine like kings, and debtors languish at the miserable Marshalsea Prison. Again, though, the originality and derring-do which marked the sleuthing duo's first appearance--in Colonial India, in The Strangler Vine (2014)--are absent, replaced by an overcrowded cast of characters, an excess of speculative to-and-fro, and a disappointing villain. Readers sensing predictability can, however, console themselves with luscious accounts of period foodie feasts: "Tender cubes of hare in a blood sauce...a small, flaky pastry cup of mackerel roe and little molded meat jellies of rice and lamb's tails." Too many red herrings and not enough good red meat.

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February 1, 2017
No chef would poison a diner, especially not in the dining room of a Victorian gentleman's club. Yet the shocking death of a prominent member at London's Reform Club and the resulting inquiry threaten a career-ending debacle for flamboyant and talented Chef Alexis Soyer, the Napoleon of Food, and a shocking scandal for the club. William Avery agrees to conduct a private investigation, but he feels the absence of his cohort, Jeremiah Blakeclearly the better detectivebut Blake languishes in prison. Third in the series, following The Infidel Stain (2016), this delectable mystery features mouthwatering food and a lavish setting. A plethora of clues and suspects and a somewhat lagging pace are offset by amusing Dickensian characterizations and surprising plot twists. Comparisons to Holmes and Watson are inevitable, for the period manners and genius-sidekick aspects, but readers most interested in not-overly-cozy historical mysteries featuring gastronomical delights will enjoy Martine Bailey's An Appetite for Violets (2015).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2016

Third in a series begun with The Strangler Vine, an Edgar and the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger finalist introducing Capt. William Avery and secret agent Jeremiah Blake, this work finds Avery investigating murder at a new gentleman's club in 1842 London. If only Blake hadn't gone missing.

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