Sign of the Cross

Blood, brutality, and betrayal run through Mogford’s second Spike Sanguinetti novel (after 2012’s Shadow of the Rock) as the Gibraltar lawyer scours Malta in an attempt to solve the apparent—and unexpected—murder-suicide of his uncle and aunt, David and Teresa Mifsud. Why would an aging art historian kill his wife, who devoted her life to helping African refugees? While Spike’s father, Rufus, who has accompanied him from Gibraltar, arranges the double funeral, Spike reunites with his ex-girlfriend, Zahra. The lawyer moves from the dispiriting refugee camps to dinner amid decaying splendor with an aging Maltese baron to discovering a fresh murder, to being assaulted by a mysterious stranger. Unfortunately, some sloppy inconsistencies (e.g., in a rape scene, the victim’s wrists are tied to a table leg yet she has a free hand to clutch her robe) mar the otherwise engaging plot. Agent: Nicola Barr, Greene & Heaton (U.K.). (May)