The Mysterium

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY OCT 31, 1994

McCormack (The Paradise Motel) keeps disbelief at bay throughout this strange, ingenious riddle of a mass extermination that won't stay solved despite a confession written in ink all over the body of the man who confesses. Carrick is a fog-shrouded, former mining town-a place of coal smoke, dead bracken and heather-in the Uplands of a country identified only as the Island. Recent acts of vandalism-the mutilation of a war memorial, desecration of a cemetery, acid thrown on books at the library-are followed by the death of a shepherd, whose body is found with his lips cut off. Then a plague strikes, killing first the animals, then children and adults. Most of the victims become garrulous, in effect talking themselves to death. Could a mad poisoner be avenging the loss of 19 Carrick soldiers in the collapse of a bridge during what is referred to as "the War?" Or are the events related to the apparent accident in which enemy POWs working the Carrick Mine were drowned? James Maxwell, a cub reporter from the Capital, assists Reeve Blair (a reeve is a police official) in his investigation. Maxwell finds patterns that lead him to utterly false but intriguing conclusions.