Death and glory

Thomas' fifteenth book in his excellent Barker and Llewellyn series (after Heart of the Nile, 2023), set in 1890s London, has the two private-enquiry agents taking on a humdinger of a case: a group of men claiming to be Confederate soldiers from the long-ended U.S. Civil War are in London and want Barker to arrange a meeting with the prime minister. Their aim? To enforce what they swear is a legitimate treaty establishing diplomatic relations between the UK and the defunct (except to these men) Confederacy and to claim the British warship they say they bought 30 years earlier. As Barker and Llewellyn try to determine if the men are deluded, dangerous, or both, they find themselves in grave danger. Barker's intelligence, wit, and unique character coupled with the hardworking Llewellyn's affability, a clever plot with unexpected twists, and a satisfying ending make this an outstanding read for anyone who enjoys out-of-the-ordinary historical mysteries, with special appeal for fans of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books.

A pair of Victorian enquiry agents take on an apparently routine assignment for an unlikely quartet of clients that leads to some truly weird complications. The Civil War may have ended nearly 30 years ago, but that doesn't deter four officers from the Confederate army--General James Woodson, Brigadier David St. Ives, Colonel Zebedee Beaufort, and Captain Manuel Cortes--from leaving the far-flung places in Latin America where they've been soldiering on to gather in London, where they ask Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn to wangle them an audience with Lord Rosebery, the prime minister. Granted 15 minutes on the PM's schedule, they waste no time in demanding that England fulfill an 1865 treaty that promised to deliver the Confederacy an ironclad warship. Things can't possibly go well for the Crown whether it grants or denies the request, since the nation will either be breaking faith with its most hallowed diplomatic practices or ratifying the Confederacy as a going concern in 1894. Though Barker and Llewelyn have already served their primary function, they can't ignore the genie they've helped escape from the bottle, and in short order they accompany St. Ives, a notorious sensualist, to some of London's most tawdry fleshpots, dig up information they hope can impugn all four of the envoys-come-lately, and follow up hints that link the treaty to both the recent murder of former U.S. senator turned Confederate diplomat Jubal Slidell, the last survivor of the real-life seizure of two Confederate officers from HMS Trent during the war, and two wildly unlikely historical figures who are supposed to have died long ago. Nothing that follows lives up to Thomas' extravagant premise, but then nothing could. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.