The Black Country (Scotland Yard's Murder Squad)
*Starred Review* In March 1890, Scotland Yard’s Inspector Walter Day and Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith bring their Murder Squad expertise to the Midlands, where a husband, wife, and son have disappeared; the couple’s three other children, left unscathed, tell conflicting stories about what happened. An eyeball, discovered by a neighbor child, is the only clue. From the beginning, the bleak stage is set: a coal-mining town in winter with its slag heaps and gray snow on glumly shadowed streets that are lined with buildings sinking slowly into deserted mine shafts below. The town’s denizens, taciturn and superstitious, believe Blackhampton is cursed, as the disappearances are followed by an epidemic of violent illness. The suspense grows exponentially while the detectives unearth clues to a bizarre and complicated crime, hoping their forensic specialist, when he arrives, will shed light on the baffling plague and the eyeball’s owner. In contrast to Day’s first case (The Yard, 2012), this second in the series moves at a brisk pace, with surprising plot twists right up to the very end. Grecian’s riveting novel is an intelligent historical thriller similar to Jean Zimmerman’s atmospheric psychological novel The Orphanmaster (2012), and as shocking as David Morrell’s Murder as a Fine Art (2013). --Jen Baker