Set in Manhattan in 1703, this spellbinding sequel to Speaks the Nightbird
(2002) from bestseller McCammon finds Matthew Corbett, a 23-year-old magistrate’s clerk, on the trail of the Masker, a killer who stalks prominent businessmen. Matthew stumbles on the bodies of two of the Masker’s victims, including pederast Eben Ausley, the headmaster of the orphanage Matthew once reluctantly called home. Plucky Matthew, who becomes a junior associate of the New York branch of a London “problem-solving” firm called the Herrald Agency, discovers a possible link to the crimes in the person of an elderly amnesiac patient in a mental asylum who’s known as “the Queen of Bedlam.” Matthew and his cohorts later make a dangerous foray to the headquarters that the villainous Professor Fell maintains for young-criminals-in-training. McCammon brilliantly captures colonial New York and closes with a tantalizing cliffhanger that suggests more exciting sleuthing to come. (Oct.)
