England Expects

February 19, 2018
London journalist Joey Gillingham says he’s in Brighton to cover a boxing match, but he’s actually heading for a meeting on a career-changing scoop, in Sheridan’s strained third mystery set in 1950s England (after 2017’s London Calling). When Gillingham ends up with his throat slashed, debt collector Mirabelle Bevan is intrigued by the unusually bold crime. Slipshod treatment of the body by the police, many of whom are Freemasons, convinces her that the secretive brotherhood is covering something up—and after Gillingham’s coded journal goes missing, Det. Supt. Alan McGregor, Mirabelle’s secret admirer, is inclined to agree. When Mirabelle and her business partner, Vesta Churchill, talk their way into the Masonic lodge, they witness its charlady die of poisoning. A visit to the derelict Brighton Pavilion, where the dead woman also worked, produces new puzzles. The Masons remain generic villains beneath their exotic trappings, and the investigation relies too much on unfounded surmise, coincidence, and confession. Hopefully, Sheridan, who has a gift for evoking the era’s class, racial, and social tensions, will return to form next time. Agent: Jenny Brown, Jenny Brown Assoc. (U.K.).