Enter Pale Death

British author Cleverly’s excellent 12th whodunit featuring Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Joe Sandilands (after 2013’s A Spider in the Cup) offers her sleuth a number of genuinely baffling crimes to solve. In June 1933, Sir James Truelove, a government minister expected to become the next Home Secretary and thereby Sandilands’s new boss, asks him to help retrieve a pair of family portraits that are up for sale at a London auction house. Truelove hopes that the presence of a uniformed copper will deter other bidders. Despite misgivings about whether he’s been given the full story, Sandilands complies and lands the artwork. Meanwhile, an anonymous letter writer advises Sandilands to look beyond the official verdict of “death by misadventure” of a titled lady killed by a dangerous stallion in the stables at Truelove’s family estate in Cambridge three months earlier. A 16-year-old girl’s suicide by drowning and an unreported theft, both dating to 1908, raise the stakes. Cleverly manages to pull everything together logically, with more than a few surprises. Agent: Juliet Burton, Juliet Burton Literary Agency (U.K.). (Dec.)