Review by New York Times Review
In BEFORE THE POISON (Morrow/HarperCollins, $25.99), Peter Robinson refutes the common assumption that romantic suspense is a woman's game. His sensitive narrator, Chris Lowndes, is a true specimen of the lonesome soul who moves into an old house that has a violent history and falls in love with the resident ghost. No sobbing heroine could be more pitiable than Chris, a veteran of decades of writing scores for Hollywood movies. The death of his wife leaves him so brokenhearted that he returns to his native England and retreats to the seclusion of the Yorkshire Dales. "I had a curious sensation that the shy, half-hidden house was waiting for me, that it had been waiting for some time," Chris says when he takes possession of the 18th-century mansion he has bought long-distance, on the strength of a few photographs. But while the real estate agent assures him no one has ever seen an apparition on the property, she neglects to explain that a former resident, Grace Fox, was hanged in 1953 for poisoning her husband. Once acquainted with the lurid details of the crime - especially Grace's scandalous affair with a local youth - Chris begins to suspect she was punished for her loose morals and might even have been innocent of murder. Unlike Chief Inspector Alan Banks, the hero of Robinson's popular detective novels, Chris hasn't the resources to conduct a formal investigation. Yet he does an outstanding job of sifting truth from gossip, traveling to London, Paris and even South Africa to interview people with firsthand knowledge of the eminent Dr. Ernest Fox and his beautiful young wife. There's a point, though, when curiosity becomes obsession, and those who care about Chris start to fear for his sanity. Robinson outdoes Daphne du Maurier in creating the proper atmosphere for the imaginative fancies of a grief-stricken man. Winds wail, snows fall and floorboards creak, accompanied by the melancholy strains of the sonata Chris is composing on Grace's grand piano. But it's not all shadows on the wall and creepy sound effects. Once Chris gets his hands on Grace's journals, written when she was a battlefield nurse in World War II, the ghostly revenant whose presence he feels in the house is swept aside by the vital woman who emerges from these pages. So, in a sense, romantic suspense does turn out to be a woman's game - but one Robinson plays very well indeed. Sebastian Becker, the former Pinkerton detective first met in Stephen Gallagner's 19th-century occult thriller "The Kingdom of Bones," returns in THE BEDLAM DETECTIVE (Crown, $25) as a special investigator for a British group called the Masters of Lunacy, whose macabre brief is to determine whether gentlemen of substance are mentally fit to handle their estates. Becker's employers are "lawyers and parasites with no other interest than to get control of a man's fortune," according to Sir Owain Lancaster, who wrote a book blaming primordial beasts for annihilating every living soul on an expedition he led into the Amazon. Sir Owain has a dilemma: stand by his book and be branded a lunatic or repudiate his claim and be censured as a fraud. Becker is also in pursuit of another beast, the one who raped and murdered two little girls, and he's convinced Sir Owain is that fiend. Gallagher's detective is a man of fine character and strong principles, but he's upstaged by the monsters he pursues. Watching Becker track down a pedophile is gratifying, but it can't beat the sight of 20 overburdened boats hurtling through white-water rapids or Sir Owain, armed to the teeth and blasting away at giant serpents only he can see. The scariest person in Elizabeth Hand's thriller AVAILABLE DARK (Thomas Dunne/Minotaur, $23,99) is its heroine, Cassandra Neary, a post-punk photographer who flamed out after a brief career on the Lower East Side in the down-and-dirty 1970s. These days, Cass is fueled by alcohol, speed, black metal and self-loathing. But she's still a cult figure, famous for her book of photographs, "Dead Girls," and respected for her discerning eye for transgressive art - a talent that lands her a job in Helsinki, authenticating grotesque photographs inspired by Icelandic legends for a client who collects "murderabilia." Hand could never get away with this stuff if she weren't such a strong writer. Her studies of artists and musicians are something fierce, and there's a deadly beauty to her bleak rendering of the Nordic landscape. Josh Bazell is so cute when he's angry. And he's really, really angry in WILD THING (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown, $25.99), the insanely funny sequel to "Beat the Reaper." The protagonist of that novel, a former hit man with a medical degree and a fake name provided by the federal witness protection program (just call him Ishmael), returns here under another pseudonym, still practicing medicine while hiding out from the mob. As junior physician on a Caribbean cruise ship, Dr. Pietro Brnwa (to call him by the name that might even be his real one) has plenty of nasty things to say about the seagoing tourist industry. But his anger really kicks in when he joins an expedition to hunt a prehistoric monster in a Minnesota lake and meets a paleontologist named Violet who explains the environmental reasons we may be "eating human flesh in the streets" in less than 30 years. Once Bazell pounces on a political topic, his wrath spills over into furious footnotes, not to mention 45 pages of source notes and an appendix that read like the work of a crackpot genius. A former resident of an 18th-century mansion was hanged for poisoning her husband.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 26, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
Horror author Gallagher kicks off a historical mystery series with barely a hint of the supernatural. In 1912, Sebastian Becker leaves his job as a Pinkerton to return his family to London so that his son, Robert, can attend a special school. (Readers familiar with autistic spectrum disorders will quickly recognize the signs and be pleased at how Gallagher blends Robert's condition into the story.) The only work Becker is able to find in London is as an investigator for the Crown's Master of Lunatics, an office commissioned to investigate rich and eccentric citizens to determine whether they are capable of managing their affairs (and money). Sent to a remote country house, Becker arrives soon after two girls disappear and immediately becomes involved in the family's troubles. Sir Owain, the reason for Becker's visit, claims that monsters followed him back from his disastrous expedition in the Amazon. Showing good series potential, this strong mystery with an intriguing lead should be suggested to fans of Jacqueline Winspear and Charles Todd.--Moyer, Jessica Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in England in 1912, this masterful whodunit from Gallagher (Red, Red Robin) introduces Sebastian Becker, a former policeman and Pinkerton agent who now works as the special investigator to the Masters of Lunacy, looking into cases involving any "man of property" whose sanity is under question. His latest assignment takes him to the small town of Arnmouth to determine whether Sir Owain Lancaster has gone around the bend. Lancaster returned from a disastrous trip to the Amazon, which claimed the life of his wife and son, only to attribute the catastrophe to mysterious animals straight out of Doyle's The Lost World. Lancaster believes that the creatures that plagued him in South America have followed him home, and are responsible for the deaths of two young girls, a theory supported by a local legend of a beast of the moor. Gallagher's superior storytelling talents bode well for future adventures starring the well-rounded Becker. Agent: Howard Morhaim. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Sebastian Becker is a special investigator for the Lord Chancellor's Visitor in Lunacy-a detective who studies whether various wealthy individuals are of sound mind and capable of conducting their own affairs. He is assigned to investigate a rich landowner, but his arrival in the man's small town coincides with a double murder for which the subject of his visit seems a likely suspect. As he works to ferret out the truth, Becker must find a way to distinguish the real monsters from the imaginary ones. The story moves easily between present and past events, leading to a conclusion that is as perfectly logical as it is surprising. Verdict Intricately drawn characters, carefully shaded depictions of events and situations, and an excellent sense of pacing mark this latest offering from Gallagher (The Kingdom of Bones; Nightmare, with Angel). This is a real page-turner, and fans will hope to see more of Sebastian Becker in the future. It may also attract readers who enjoy historical thrillers in the Caleb Carr tradition.-Pamela O'Sullivan, SUNY Brockport Lib. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Monsters, actual and metaphorical, are at the heart of this superbly crafted thriller. Gallagher has been called a horror writer, a fantasy writer, a non-fantasy writer, a writer for big screens and smaller ones, a writer whose considerable talent has enabled him to slip in and out of genres precisely as if those tidy little boxes didn't exist--as indeed they don't for his character-driven books. In this one, Sebastian Becker (The Kingdom of Bones, 2007, etc.), his fast-track career abruptly derailed, contemplates an uncertain future. Now that the Pinkertons have sent him packing, he faces 1912 back in his native England, employed as the special investigator to the Masters of Lunacy. Englishmen of property deemed too loopy to look after anyone's property face Bedlams of one sort or another, their property removed from their care. It's up to Sir James Crichton-Browne, acting for His Majesty's Government, to render judgments informed by evidence his special investigator Sebastian provides. The job pays poorly but is nuanced enough to be interesting. And it gets even more so when Sebastian meets Sir Owain Lancaster, a scientist who's been widely respected until he blames the failure of his lavish Amazonian expedition on a series of attacks by horrific monsters only he can see. No longer respected but still exceedingly rich, he becomes grist for Sebastian's mill. Is Sir Owain really crazy? Or, much worse, is he himself a monster? Gallagher loves character development but respects plotting enough to give it full measure. The result is that rare beast, a literary page-turner. ]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.