A Burial at Sea

Agatha Christie meets Patrick O’Brian in Finch’s accomplished fifth whodunit set in Victorian England (after 2010’s A Stranger in Mayfair), the best in the series to date. Although aristocratic sleuth Charles Lenox has become a member of Parliament and is expecting his first child, his brother, Sir Edmund, a close adviser to Prime Minister Gladstone, taps Charles in March 1873 to undertake a delicate espionage mission to Egypt, where five British agents have been killed, apparently by the French. But soon after Charles’s ship sets sail, the captain calls on him to dust off his deductive skills when a crew member is murdered and left eviscerated on the deck. Charles is under pressure to solve the shocking crime quickly to limit its emotional aftershocks. While Finch may not be the first to set a murder mystery at sea, he perfectly integrates the ship’s routines and customs into the fair-play plot. (Nov.)