Daughters of darkness

Cop turned PI Jennie Redhead is sassy, savvy, and irreverent, but she has a knack for solving cases that have baffled the police--much to the coppers' chagrin. So when Julia Pemberton asks Jennie to find out who murdered Julia's mother, Grace, three years earlier, Jennie agrees to help. Dr. Grace Stockton was decapitated and buried in a shallow grave in a woods near the remote family estate. Her head has never been found, and the only solid clue the police have is a CCTV photo of a mysterious woman in a duffle coat arriving at the Oxford train station around the time Grace was murdered. As Jennie begins to investigate, she decides that with so little information in the case file, she will have a tough time making progress, but with determination and loads of legwork, she soon uncovers a bizarre story that began with Grace's childhood spent in New Guinea, moved to London in the last days of WWII, and finally ended with Grace's murder in Oxford, in the 1970s. This is a deeply affecting and disturbing novel, both suspenseful and tragic, one of Spencer's best over a long career. Riveting reading from first page to last.

A baffling cold case preoccupies Jennie Redhead, "Oxford's only redheaded private investigator with an Upper Second in English Literature," in Spencer's superior third mystery set in 1970s Oxford, England (after 2018's Dry Bones). Julia Pemberton, a physics professor with powerful government connections, wants Redhead to solve the murder three years earlier of Pemberton's mother, Grace Stockton, a renowned anthropologist. The victim's decapitated corpse was found in the woods near the home she shared with her husband, an Oxford academic, who was in the U.S. when she died. The police focused their inquiries on an unknown woman who had asked for directions to the Stockton home around the time of the crime, but despite her having been caught on camera at the nearby rail station, the suspect eluded detection. Redhead's diligent sleuthing leads to a satisfying, if downbeat solution. Refreshingly, Spencer doesn't make Redhead, who's capable of snark and petty malice, wholly likable. Readers will look forward to the further adventures of this distinctive lead. (July)

An Oxford graduate investigates a professor's death. Jennifer Redhead's years at Oxford left the working-class girl from the north of England with a profound distaste for anyone posh, pompous, or pretentious. So at first the private detective isn't inclined to accept a commission from Julia Pemberton, who teaches physics at Cambridge, to find her mother's killer. But after holding her own in a verbal sparring match with the eminent physicist, and after earning the blessing of DCI Ken Macintosh of the Thames Valley police, Jennie decides to look into the cold case. She learns that Julia's parents are also academics: Dr. Derek Stockton a rather prosaic professor of religion, and Dr. Grace Stockton a somewhat less conventional anthropologist, whose early years growing up in Papua New Guinea marked her more deeply than even her husband realized. Still, it was not her earliest years but a relationship with a down-and-outer named Jane that developed when both were young mothers during the World War II bombings of London that lays the foundation for Grace's tragic end. Readers who can get past Jennie's inveterate reverse snobbery will be treated to a complex tale of good people who make bad decisions for reasons even they don't completely understand. Spencer telegraphs some of her plot twists too early but sneaks others under the radar for a series of delightful jolts. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.