Over My Dead Body

November 1, 2021
Like a pair of Kabuki warriors or comic-book antagonists, DCI William Warwick and archcriminal Miles Faulkner return for yet another round of cat-and-mouse plotting and counterplotting. Luxuriating with his wife, Beth, keeper of pictures at London's Fitzmolean Museum, aboard the SS Alden, a liner bound for New York, William is disconcerted when Fraser Buchanan, the chairman of the Pilgrim Line that owns the ship, dies during a meal. And he's deeply chagrined when his attempts to prove that the patriarch was poisoned are short-circuited by a burial at sea he's powerless to prevent. Fear not: This strangely extended prologue's only connection to the main event is that when the Aldendocks in New York, William skips the wedding he and Beth have been invited to and hastens back to England alone because he's gotten word that Faulkner, reported dead at the end of Turn a Blind Eye(2021), may be enjoying a new life as Capt. Ralph Neville, who's courting Christina Faulkner, his widow, so that he won't have to let go of the art collection he left to her. Faulkner, who's good at these things, slips out of the dragnet Scotland Yard has gathered around him before they can snap it shut, but the ongoing standoff between him and William is more dutiful than engaging. Luckily, longtime undercover DI Ross Hogan, whom retiring Cmdr. Hawksby is grooming as William's second, develops an altogether more personal reason for going after Faulkner and, at long last, begins to litter the path he blazes to his quarry with the bodies of his agents. The mixture as before, for those who want another round.

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July 1, 2021
Detective Chief Inspector William Warwick, of the London Metropolitan Police, has a lot on his plate. A lawyer appears to be perpetrating a fraud, claiming to be acting in the interests of a dead man; the newly-formed Unsolved Cases Unit is tracking the whereabouts of a handful of alleged killers; and there's skullduggery behind the scenes at a luxury cruise line. This is the fourth Warwick mystery (after Turn a Blind Eye, 2021), and again William has risen in rank (Archer's intent from the beginning of the series was to follow Warwick as his career progressed); he's now the youngest DCI on the force, and clearly destined for even bigger things. As usual, Archer deftly balances the mystery and family elements--William's relationship with his father, a noted criminal barrister, has had its ups and downs--and the various criminal subplots all tie together very nicely. Another winner in this consistently excellent series.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.