Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff

Julia Spencer-Fleming brings readers the ninth installment in her popular series featuring NY police chief Russ Van Alstyne and his wife, Episcopalian priest Clare Fergusson in Hid From Our Eyes.

With two busy careers, the newlyweds are managing their infant son’s needs. Russ is fielding the possible defunding of his department and an impending vote, while Clare looks for help at her church to ease her workload and fights for her sobriety when a young woman’s body is found on a lonely road outside of town.

The body is found in a situation that bears an uncanny resemblance to a similar case from 1952, when the police chief at the time was Harry McNeil.

When he retired and the new chief was Jack Liddle, another woman was found in similar circumstances. In that case, the suspect was a local boy, a Vietnam vet who’d just returned and found the body while passing on his motorcycle: Russ Van Alstyne.

The book shows threads of all three time periods as the case heats up and shows that the first two cases were never solved. Of course, the last thing Russ needs is the decades-old suspicions coming up when he’s fighting to save his department.

And it may be the last thing harried Clare needs, too.

They will set out to find the murderer who has managed to evade authorities for decades. As the action switches between
the time periods and the victims, suspects will rear be on the radar, but the stretched time period skews things, making the denouement all the more complex and interesting.

Spencer-Fleming has developed the personalities of Russ and Clare thoroughly in previous books, yet readers new to the series will be able to discern why they are such a popular couple, as she illustrates the frustrations they share underpinned by their love.

She doesn’t ignore secondary characters, either, bringing attention to single mom Hadley Knox, whose past she keeps running from, and her strained relationship with another officer no longer in their department.

It all adds up to a highly anticipated mystery that will make readers of the series realize just how much they’d been missing Russ and Clare. Highly recommended.

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Charles Finch brings Charles Lenox in a third novel in a prequel trilogy to the series in The Last Passenger. Set in Victorian London in 1855 during the days leading up to the Civil War in America, this clueless murder case may be young detective’s most disturbing case.

It’s a way to discern the man Lenox will become and those who form part of his mature life when he’s called in to the case of murder. A has been found on a train to London without any way to identify it. What is first thought of as a case of theft may instead have ties to the anti-slavery movement hitting America.

Throughout the investigation is Finch’s deep respect for language and for historical accuracy. Readers will learn about the mores and customs of the era, the social prejudices, and the ways of the era.

The character’s are realistic and fit the time period, from the main to the smallest side parts. And the book fills a hole in Lenox’s own history, while at the same time pointing out the class differences all around, even extending to women and their roles. Of course, there are all the women thrust at the highly marriageable Lenox.

But that is additionally to the investigation he undertakes, and the obstacles he finds. An accomplished and realistic look at the differences between UK and US times, there is enough humor to keep the book afloat as Lenox figures it all out.

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