British author Charles offers another smooth police procedural (the sixth in the series after 2002's The Hissing of the Silent Lonely Room), which begins with a grisly slaying in Greater London and ends dramatically in a remote corner of Det. Insp. Kennedy's native Ulster. In a scene not for the squeamish, WW II veteran Victor Dugsdale's butchered corpse is found hanging in an urban renewal project dubbed the Black Cat Building. With the help of series regulars Det. Sgt. James Irvine and Det. Constable Ann Coles, Kennedy's determined sleuthing soon leads him back to Northern Ireland, where the victim's long estranged daughter has recognized her father's picture in the press. Through well-coordinated, simultaneous investigations in London and Ireland, Kennedy and a journalist friend/lover establish links between Dugsdale's former army buddies and a suspicious local bridge club turned cult led by a fanatical clergyman. In pubs, farmhouses and police stations, the reader sees firsthand the isolation of Ireland's rugged north coast and the warmth and hospitality of its inhabitants keen to help solve the murder of their native son. A moving climactic scene takes us back to a bloody encounter 60 years earlier, when an act of cowardice in a local army unit led to tragedy in wartime France and set the stage for the banshee to sing for retribution. (Mar. 24)
