The Cutthroat

January 30, 2017
An intriguing premise—Jack the Ripper is alive and well and rampaging across early-20th-century America—boosts bestseller Cussler’s 10th Isaac Bell adventure (after 2016’s The Gangster, also coauthored with Scott). Wealthy industrialist William Pape asks Bell, the Van Dorn Detective Agency’s chief investigator, to look for his missing 18-year-old daughter, Anna, who has run away from her home in Connecticut to become an actress in New York. When Anna turns up butchered in her Manhattan boarding house room, Bell’s investigation leads him to the bodies of other young women, all of whom have slashed throats and strange markings carved into their skin. Bell persuades his boss that, even though they have no actual client, it’s their duty to bring the perpetrator to justice. The detective finds that the killer, now known as the Cutthroat, has a connection with a traveling play, a modernized version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Fans of historical action novels will find a lot to like. Agent: Peter Lampack, Peter Lampack Agency.

February 1, 2017
It's No. 10 in the Cussler and Scott (The Gangster, 2016, etc.) series chronicling the adventures of rich man-sleuth Isaac Bell and the Van Dorn Detective Agency as the 20th century dawns.It's 1911, and Bell's promised a Connecticut millionaire he'll find his daughter, a young woman who left the lap of luxury and went missing among the wanna-be actors, money-grubbing producers, and crooked agents of New York City's theater district. Bell finds her, but too late. The girl's been murdered. Bell is distraught, angry, and now feels compelled to catch her killer. Soon Van Dorn's research group unearths other murders with similar modus operandi--laid open with a large knife, up close and personal--from as far away as Jack the Ripper's London to New York and to cities across the country as far as Los Angeles. Tracing the elusive killer, Bell forms a "Cutthroat Squad," a double-handful of tougher-than-nails Van Dorn detectives. Bell and squad soon figure out the murders are occurring wherever a touring theater group is presenting the play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The narrative makes stopovers at the Savile Club in Mayfair and NYC's Knickerbocker Hotel, and as with nearly every Cussler tome, contemporary gadgetry--a Morkrum Printing Telegraph, an Atlantic 4-4-2 Deaver-built locomotive--adds authenticity to the period setting. It's an action-packed, fast-moving, but not especially gory story, with pauses for Bell to use his fists or .45 or flaunt his wealth. Famous folk like Caruso make cameos, but Bell, an engrossing-enough meld of Dudley Do-Right and James Bond, and his cohort of detectives get their man. Despite an awkward transition or two and a bit of padding (there's a recipe for Welsh rarebit), the Bell series hits the right note for those who like crime fiction with a unique setting.

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February 15, 2017
March 1911. A wealthy industrialist's 18-year-old daughter is missing. Her father knows she wants to be an actress, and he's afraid she's run off to New York City, or that something worse has happened to her. He hires Isaac Bell, of the Van Dorn Detective Agency, to find her. After Bell finds that the young woman has been murdered, his investigation turns up other murdered women, some of the crimes dating back as many as 20 years. And the method of their deaths is eerily familiar: Is it possible that Jack the Ripper is alive and well two decades after his disappearance? This engrossing adventure yarn (the Bell series remains the best-written and most compelling of Cussler's many enterprises) takes Bell from NYC to London in his search for a killer and provides readers with an interesting take on the Ripper mystery. Good fun for anyone who enjoys the over-the-top Cussler approach to thrills.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

October 15, 2016

Back for a tenth outing following The Gangster, a No. 1 New York Times best seller on the print, ebook, and combined lists, early 20th-century detective Isaac Bell is tasked with finding a young woman named Anna Pape, who's run off to become an actress. (If only.) Alas, she turns up dead, as do other young women resembling Anna nationwide.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.