Counted Among the Dead

The fascinating 13th installment of Emery’s series featuring priest Brennan Burke and defense attorney Monty Collins (after Fenian Street) draws inspiration from the 1917 Halifax explosion. In 1993, Collins’s 10-year-old daughter, Normie, writes a two-part play about the explosion—which killed more than 1,700 people when a French cargo ship and a Norwegian military vessel collided in Halifax harbor—for an assignment at the school where Burke works. During her research, Normie discovers the journals of two boys who lived through the disaster; one describes the shady goings-on he observed in the brothel next door to his home. After a performance of the play’s first part, Normie promises her audience that part two will unveil “a mystery about that house next door.” Soon, she starts receiving threatening letters, prompting Burke and Collins to investigate. When a young woman shows up at the former brothel, asking to look around, then turns up dead the same night, their efforts intensify. Though the novel gets off to a disjointed start, with too many timelines and points of view to juggle, everything eventually comes together, with plenty of nerve-jangling suspense on offer in the narrative’s back half. History buffs and mystery fans alike will walk away satisfied. (Sept.)