Hoare and the Headless

There's treason and skullduggery afoot in Perkins's second novel featuring the redoubtable Captain Bartholomew Hoare. At the story's start, Hoare, whose voice has been reduced to a permanent whisper by an injury -dream of taking command of a new ship. His charge is to make the lowly Royal Duke seaworthy without actually going to sea, and to bring its motley crew of men and women into seafaring shape. An unusual vessel, the Royal Duke is actually a mobile intelligence-gathering operation for King George III. So when two naval officers are found beheaded in a moor near Dorchester known for occult practices, Hoare is assigned to investigate the murders; whether the killings are the work of demon worshipers or of Bonaparte's French agents is the plot's central question. Meanwhile, Hoare continues his painstaking romancing of Jane Austen's friend, the widow Eleanor Graves. With its witty wordplay and attention to the nuances of British society, Perkins's droll telling of this rowdy and rollicking adventure takes a page out of Austen's work. But the author's emphasis on nefarious doings will please any mystery fan, and his eccentric characters are all his own. (Jan.) FYI: Hoare first appeared in Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities. Perkins completed this novel and one additional Hoare adventure before his death last year.