Reviewed By: Carl Brookins - RAM
The Arsenic Labyrinth
Amazon US HC Amazon UK HC Amazon Canada HC
Martin Edwards
Class/Genre: Mystery Woman Main Character Police Procedural
Series: Lake District Mysteries # 3
Poisoned Pen Press, 304 pages, Hardcover
Author Martin Edwards has a distinguished career of crime writing, both fiction and non-fiction. He’s been short-listed for a CWA dagger and has been tapped for editorial duties on a number of past occasions. The present novel reflects his experience and mastery of the craft in this third Lakes Country novel. Here again we have historian Daniel Kind, son of a former area detective, DCI Hanna Scarlett, head of a cold case squad, and a cast of local characters who provide substantial fascination as we follow the historian and the detective on separate but linked paths to the solution of a ten-year-old disappearance.
The desolate fells behind the village of Coniston give rises to many legends and more than a few secrets. On the tenth anniversary of the event, the local newspaper, egged on by an arrogant, self-important reporter, prints a story on the enduring mystery of the disappearance of a woman named Emma Bestwick. Shortly thereafter the reporter receives a whispered call from someone who clearly knows more than he’s ever before told about what really happened to the woman named Emma Bestwick.
DCI Scarlett is learning that a significant part of being the head of a major investigatory unit requires paying attention to public interest in addition to budget balancing and arrangement of limited resources. It’s no longer sufficient merely to be a top-notch detective.
In spite of almost instinctual antipathy to the reporter, Scarlett finds it necessary to talk to the man and thus opens up new lines of inquiry into the disappearance. At the same time, newly resident historian Daniel Kind is developing interest in the celebrity of deceased local writer/philosopher, John Ruskin. Kind, a minor celebrity in his own right, needs a new subject on which to focus his energy and talent. Will Ruskin’s life and slow fall into a certain madness give Daniel the foundation for a new book? His search for information ultimately crosses paths with Scarlett’s as she and her team draw ever closer to surprising answers to the riddle of Emma Bestwick, who it develops, hid some mysteries of her own.
The labyrinth of the title was a series of large flues built above a furnace in the fells to extract deadly arsenic as a heavy vapor from the ore and then collected by workers from the walls of the flues. It was a dangerous process, largely abandoned after the nineteenth century and in this story, the deteriorating works are the site of depraved and dangerous activities.
Edwards has fashioned a complicated and intriguing story. The pace is steady and draws one in, page by page. We soon want to know not only how the story works its way out of the labyrinth, but how the truth affects some of the principals. A fine, well-written, twisty story that will hold reader’s interest to the end.
Carl Brookins - RAM
Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Carl Brookins - RAM
Please visit Carl's website at http://www.carlbrookins.com/
If you enjoy this website, a link would be appreciated. |