The Circle
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Intrepid nineteenth-century enquiry agents American Matthew Grand and Englishman James Batchelor bring their investigation skills to Washington, DC.
July, 1868. On receiving a commission from Matthew's cousin Luther to look into the suspicious death of Lafayette Baker, Head of the US National Detective Police, private investigators Matthew Grand and his business partner James Batchelor leave London for Washington, DC. They find a country still scarred by the bitter legacy of the Civil War and even in death Lafayette Baker remains one of the most hated men north or south of the Potomac.
The newly-created Ku Klux Klan wanted him dead. So did the Washington brothel-keepers, bar-owners, and gamblers whom Baker had closed down. What does beautiful former spy Miss Belle Boyd know that she's not telling them? And could the President himself be involved?
Matthew Grand finds he has come home to a mixed reception, while Batchelor struggles as an Englishman abroad. Will either of them survive long enough to uncover the truth?
"Trow's absorbing historical will please Civil War buffs as well as readers who relish the mysteries of Will Thomas and Charles Finch" ―Library Journal
"A plot packed with skulduggery . . . sometimes dangerous, sometimes comic, sometimes bizarre adventures." ―Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1868, Trow's so-so sequel to 2015's The Blue and the Grey pivots on the death of Lafayette Baker, the head of the U.S. National Detective Police. In a prologue set in a Philadelphia rooming house, Lafayette has a fatal encounter with a man identified only as Wally. Wally acts on behalf of a shadowy figure, who assures him that he has acted in the nation's interest. Luther Baker, a cousin of Lafayette's, recruits British private inquiry agents Matthew Grand and James Batchelor to investigate, giving them a literal blank check to do so. The pair quickly find evidence of arsenic poisoning to support Luther's theory of foul play, and their client sets them on the track of Edwin Stanton, the former Secretary of War, whose removal from office leads to Andrew Johnson's impeachment, and whose absence from Ford's Theatre the night Lincoln was shot raised suspicions of involvement in Booth's plot. Underdeveloped leads, a lack of genuine surprises, and a failure to evoke the tensions of postbellum America are all negatives.
