A Study in Revenge

Conan Doyle fans will appreciate the Holmes/Watson-like relationship of Perceval Grey, who’s half Abenaki Indian, and deputy Archie Lean of the Portland, Maine, police in Shields’s excellent sequel to 2012’s The Truth of All Things. Early one morning in the summer of 1893, burglar Frankie “the Foot” Cosgrove meets a man near the city reservoir to deliver an unusually marked stone he has stolen at the behest of an unknown client. Cosgrove expects to be paid $500, but instead the man shoots him dead. In a macabre twist, Cosgrove’s burned corpse turns up after its burial in an abandoned house adorned with drawings of Satan and the message “Hell Awaits.” Grey, who turns his impressive intellect to the bizarre case, makes a nifty deduction based on Lean’s comments about Cosgrove’s living quarters. Meanwhile, a wealthy dying man hires Grey to look for his long-lost granddaughter, though the dying man’s family is more interested in a recently stolen heirloom. The humanity of the well-developed leads enhances the smooth-flowing plot. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, William Morris Endeavor. (Jan.)