Murder on Insel Poel: A Third-Culture Kid Mystery

Nelson’s enjoyable fifth Third-Culture Kid mystery (after 2013’s Murder in Paris) finds technical writer Annie Young visiting Insel Poel, a sleepy German island in the Baltic, several weeks before Christmas. A local museum hires Annie, a multilingual “third-culture kid” who was born in America but raised mostly in Europe, to translate a history of the island. While exploring Insel Poel’s wintery beaches, she discovers the bodies of two young Asian women who were murdered. Willful Annie goes against the wishes of her fiancé, Roger Perret, a French police chief, and starts snooping around for clues. Though Annie’s modern-day story is intriguing enough, Nelson intertwines it with two WII-era tales, set in Germany and Britain, respectively. The German segment’s engaging young protagonist, Hilke, deserves her own book, but the British story, about a shy bomber pilot’s courtship of a vicar’s daughter, is underdeveloped. Nonetheless, Nelson has produced a must-read for fans of historical mysteries or previous series entries. (Mar.)