A Mask of Shadows

Set in Edinburgh in 1889, de Muriel’s effective third paranormal mystery (after 2017’s A Fever of the Blood) puts Adolphus “Nine Nails” McGray and his partner, Insp. Ian Frey, the members of the Commission for the Elucidation of Unsolved Cases Presumably Related to the Odd and Ghostly, on the trail of a banshee that has been haunting a production of Macbeth starring theater legends Ellen Terry and Henry Irving. The banshee leaves behind some ominous messages written in blood, which hint that a murder will be committed on the play’s opening night—and which may be part of a scheme to terrorize Terry, who finds a bucket of bloody brains in her dressing room. Given that ticket sales have been lagging, the investigators consider the theory that the unsettling events may simply be a ploy to generate publicity. Their inquiry also ends up involving Terry and Irving’s assistant, Dracula creator Bram Stoker. While Nicholas Meyer’s The West End Horror did a better job of setting a murder case among real-life Victorian actors, de Muriel continues to make his offbeat series concept work. X-Files fans will be pleased. [em]Agent: Maggie Hanbury, Hanbury Agency (U.K.). (June) [/em]