Loch of the Dead

Starred review from February 18, 2019
In de Muriel’s excellent fourth Victorian mystery featuring the Commission for the Elucidation of Unsolved Cases Presumably Related to the Odd and Ghostly (after 2018’s A Mask of Shadows), the commission’s two members, Scottish Insp. Ian Frey and his superior, Adolphus McGray, look into a particularly creepy case. In 1873, servant Millie Fletcher gives up her baby, Benjamin, the product of an assault by Maximilian Koloman, the brother of her employer, Konrad. In 1889, Maximilian signs a document on his deathbed recognizing Benjamin as his heir and asking Konrad to reunite the boy with Millie. Shortly afterward, Millie receives a note threatening her son’s life. In return for Frey and McGray’s help in protecting Benjamin, Millie offers to cure McGray’s mentally ill sister. In search of answers, the pair travel to remote Loch Maree, the Koloman family home, which supposedly contains a healing well and which is also home to legends of Druidic rituals involving bathing in blood. There they soon have a murder to solve. De Muriel keeps the twists coming in the series’ best entry to date. Agent: Maggie Hanbury, Hanbury Agency (U.K.).