The Body on the Doorstep

The execution of British author MacKenzie’s mystery debut, a series launch, falls short of its intriguing premise. Late one night in the spring of 1796, Marcus Aurelius Hardcastle, a Kent rector, is busy composing a letter to a newspaper warning that Britain’s coastline is vulnerable to an invasion by the “blood-stained minions” of the French Republic when he’s interrupted by a pounding on his front door. When Hardcastle opens it, he finds a man dying of a gunshot wound on his doorstep. Before expiring, the victim utters the cryptic words, “Tell Peter... mark... trace.” Hardcastle feels compelled to investigate, despite being warned not to by his church superior, and engages the aid of Amelia Chaytor, an intrepid and prepossessing widow. The plot line is solid enough, but the main characters are less developed than Imogen Robertson’s Crowther and Westerman, another late-18th-century male investigator paired with a widow. MacKenzie is the pseudonym of Marilyn Livingstone and her husband, Morgen Witzel, who have jointly written many academic works of nonfiction. (Nov.)