Blood from a Stone: A Jack Haldean Mystery

Christie and Sayers fans will find Gordon-Smith’s seventh Jack Haldean whodunit set in post-WWI England (after 2012’s Trouble Brewing) a well-crafted throwback to the golden age of detection that pairs deduction with solid writing. Crime writer Haldean gets involved in solving the case of a gruesome murder aboard a train. A man who was stabbed to death had his head ripped off when someone positioned the corpse at an open window, apparently in an effort to stymie the police by delaying identification of the victim. Robbery was not the motive, given that the killer left behind a stash of valuable sapphires. The murder may be the work of a thief known as the Vicar, whose calling card (Simon Templar–like) is the drawing of a cross with a halo on top. The railway slaying may connect with Terence Napier, a man suspected of murdering his aunt. The author cleverly draws the various threads together in the series’ best entry to date. (July)