In Like Flynn

February 28, 2005
In Bowen's absorbing, well-plotted fourth entry in this Agatha Award–winning historical series (after 2003's For the Love of Mike
), Molly Murphy's former beau, policeman Daniel Sullivan, arranges for Molly to leave New York City (and the rapidly spreading typhoid epidemic of 1902). The police are interested in the Sorensons, a pair of sisters working as spiritualists, whom they want to expose as fakes. Molly joins the upstate household of Sen. Barney Flynn, posing as one of his numerous cousins recently arrived from Ireland. Flynn's wife, Theresa, has invited the Sorensons to the Flynns' Hudson River estate because she wants to make contact with her missing son, presumed dead after disappearing in a kidnapping attempt several years before. Molly also plans to investigate what happened to the Flynns' son at the behest of the child's nurse, who was implicated in the crime but still proclaims her innocence. Determined to get at the truth, the redoubtable Molly has to confront a dark part of her own past before this complex tale comes to a bittersweet and heartfelt conclusion. Agent, Meg Ruley at Jane Rotrosen Agency. Author tour. (Mar. 17)

FYI:
Bowen is also the author of the Constable Evans series, including
Evan's Gate (Forecasts, Mar. 29, 2004), which is a best novel finalist for an Edgar this year.

February 1, 2005
In the summer of 1902 while New York City is gripped in the wave of a typhoid epidemic, PI Molly Murphy (Murphy's Law) is hired to work undercover in the upstate home of a state senator whose wife has come under the influence of two female spiritualists. At stake are fraud, an unsolved kidnapping, and murder. An inviting historical series. Agatha Award-winner Bowen lives in California.

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2005
Molly Murphy escapes the typhoid epidemic in New York City in 1902 by going undercover as a cousin of Senator Barney Flynn in his house above the Hudson River. Flynn's wife still mourns the kidnapping and death of their son, and she has turned to spiritualists for solace. Molly, while investigating the spiritualist sisters, also tries to untangle the web around the kidnapping. Told in the first person, Molly's adventures strain credulity a bit this time: more than one attempted rape, a poisoning where she forgives and dismisses the guilty party, and the reappearance of an evil figure from her past whom she thought was long dead. Even the Black Hand and the orphan trains play roles. Meanwhile, Molly toys with the affections of an Irish police officer and a Jewish anarchist and is toyed with in return. Too much, to be sure, but series fans will want to see what happens next.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)