A Cast of Vultures

November 21, 2016
Near the start of Flanders’s engaging if convoluted third novel featuring London book editor Samantha Clair (after 2016’s A Bed of Scorpions), Sam agrees to help an elderly friend, Viv, locate a missing neighbor of Viv’s, Dennis Harefield. Days after she and Viv break into Dennis’s flat, his body is discovered in an abandoned building that caught fire and was home to a group of squatters. When the police accuse the dead man of arson and drug dealing, Sam resolves to help Viv prove his innocence, disregarding the concerns of her boyfriend, police detective Jake Field. Claire’s quest soon puts her in jeopardy. Flanders adroitly avoids chick-lit clichés, opting for nuanced, multidimensional characters, including Sam’s high-powered attorney mother, Helena, and her reclusive upstairs neighbor, Mr. Rudiger. Insights into the fraught culture of publishing, where editors balance publicity demands with interference by corporate management consultants who refer to books as “product,” lend interest. Readers will look forward to seeing more of smart, successful, self-deprecating Sam. Agent: George Lucas, Inkwell Management.

Starred review from December 15, 2016
A missing neighbor, a series of fires, and turmoil at work are just the start of Samantha Clair's problems. A hangover has put Sam, a Canadian-born book publisher living in North London, in a foul mood. But she can't say no to her elderly friend Viv when she asks for help in learning whether her friend Dennis, who lives upstairs from her in a council flat, is missing or perhaps lying dead on his floor, since no one's seen him in days. A search of the flat reveals no body and no reason for Dennis to be missing, and the police are not much interested. So Sam goes into sleuthing mode over the objections of her CID boyfriend, Jake. The next disaster to strike the neighborhood is a fire that destroys a house that sheltered several squatters who've all lived there for years: Mo and Dan and their son; electrician Mike; and gardener Steve. Jake, who isn't up on the local gossip, is not pleased to hear about the squatters and even less pleased when Sam decides to let Steve use her front yard to grow veggies. When Dennis is found dead at the fire scene, Sam learns that although he worked for the local council, he also ran an after-school teen club. Because a large amount of cash was found in his flat, the working theory is that he was a drug dealer using neighborhood teens to help deliver his wares. At Sam's publishing house, a team of management consultants who lack even basic knowledge of the business is driving everyone crazy, and at home, Sam and Jake continue to bicker over the squatters. Although Sam thinks she's discovered little that will help solve the neighborhood's problems, a series of scary incidents forces her to consider what she really does know. The highlights of the third in this marvelous and often amusing series (A Bed of Scorpions, 2016, etc.) are neighborhood characters who are a basket of enjoyables and a complex and brainy heroine.

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September 15, 2016

New York Times best-selling social historian Flanders, who launched her mystery-writing career with the LibraryReads pick A Murder of Magpies, brings back book editor and amateur sleuth Sam Clair. Her new case involves arson, missing neighbors, and an unidentified body.

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