Something Wicked

Written by David Roberts
Review by Doug Kemp

This is the ninth book in the Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne Golden Age of Detection murder mystery series. It is the summer of 1938, and Verity has returned from her intrepid reporting of the deteriorating political crisis in Prague with tuberculosis. She is sent to recuperate in a clinic near Henley-on-Thames. There Verity is perfectly placed for her fiancé, Lord Edward, to both visit her and investigate a series of three deaths in the area. The local police are assuming them to be unconnected events, but Edward has good reason to see them as murders committed by the same person. Both Edward and Verity face the machinations of the ruthless killer during the Henley Regatta as well as designs on their lives from a Nazi SS agent, Major Stille, whom they have encountered in anger in previous books. Thrilling times indeed, for both our heroes as England is sucked back into war.

This is an entertaining and capable murder mystery, thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the late 1930s.