This is the fourth novel in the series set in England’s northwest Lake District, an area well-known not only for its landscape, but the home of Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Carlyle, Beatrix Porter and Thomas De Quincey, this last perhaps best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, but less famous for On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts, a reference point in this plot. The series follows Oxford historian Daniel Kind and DCI Hannah Scarlett, now reassigned to the Cold Case Squad.
A baffling six-year-old case involving a young woman who drowned in six inches of water in the Serpent Pool, a fairly bleak spot in the area, has Hannah running in circles. Was it murder or suicide? Meanwhile, two new murders take place with intriguingly disparate MOs, but Hannah discerns some obscure similarities. Are all three cases related?
All this takes place while a De Quincey Festival is being put together and Daniel is writing a book about the author, who influenced such writers as Poe, Baudelaire, Gogol and Borges. This novel has all the elements of the mysteries of these stalwarts: suspense, sinister aspects, hidden secrets, a tight plot and interesting characters and good writing.
Recommended.
