The Armada Boy: A Wesley Peterson Crime Novel

When American WWII veteran Norman Openheim gets stabbed to death while visiting a ruined chapel late one night outside Bereton, England, Det. Sergeant Wesley Peterson has no lack of leads in this absorbing police procedural. First on the suspect list is Norman's wife, Dorinda. It's no secret that she's been having an affair with another man among the group of U.S. army veterans and their wives who've traveled to the south coast of England for a reunion. Norman himself, it turns out, left behind a pregnant girlfriend and possibly some resentment in 1944. As Peterson and his colleagues delve ever deeper into the past, they learn that another reunion group member, Litton Boratski, was accused of raping a local girl, but U.S. authorities squelched the investigation shortly before D-Day. And what is the truth behind the tale of an American soldier shooting dead an Englishman caught rabbit-hunting in an off-limits area? Guidebook extracts that head each chapter give the sad history of shipwreck survivors from the Spanish Armada, who formed another kind of invading army in 1588. The murder of a young Spanish sailor, buried in the Bereton chapel, tragically parallels criminal events centuries later. Though this is only her second novel (after Wesley Peterson's debut in The Merchant's House), Ellis unfolds an intricate yarn of misdirected revenge with all the assurance of a seasoned veteran of the genre. (July)