Dreams of Justice by Dick Adler Read Free Book Online

When her husband disappears, Inez proves she can overcome that and other tragedies to triumph in a male world by taking over the running of their saloon and helping to clear up several murders, scams and distressing puzzles.
    Parker is a science writer with a degree in literature and the ability to sum up in a few sharp sentences the tawdry power of a frontier boomtown like Leadville, where a sudden surge in silver could burnish everyone’s dreams. Like the wonderful black and white photograph of historic Leadville on its cover (the credit for which admits “Image altered”), her first novel, which won a regional writing contest, combines a kind of gritty grandeur with a knowing wisdom about the way the present shapes our perceptions of the past.
    JUSTICE HALL, by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who championed many social causes in his life if not in his popular fiction (where the villains were the usual 19th Century suspects—evil people greedy for wealth and power), would probably have wholeheartedly approved of the way Laurie R. King has managed to modernize Sherlock Holmes by grafting on a social conscience in the form of a young American wife. The creation of Mary Russell has allowed King to turn her two detectives’ formidable intelligence loose on topics which Conan Doyle would never have attempted—everything from women’s rights to the mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs—without dulling the fine edge of excitement.
    Mary is 24 in this sixth volume of King’s consistently smart and poignant series, and Holmes is 60. It is 1923; they have just returned to their home on the Sussex Downs (where Holmes keeps bees and Mary writes and studies obscure texts) from the Dartmoor adventure detailed in Book Four, “The Moor.” But it is the two major characters from Book Five, “O Jerusalem,” which takes place in 1919—two Bedouin rogues named Ali and Mahmoud Hazr—who suddenly reappear four years later to excellent dramatic advantage as “Justice Hall” quickly explodes into what may well be the best book in the series.
    Like T. E. Lawrence, Ali and his cousin Mahmoud are really English Arabists—men who have literally reinvented themselves in the desert, letting the sun and sand burn away all traces of their Englishness. Unfortunately, both are also Hughenforts—Alistair and Marsh—part of “a thin handful of the nation’s families that had actually stepped onto England’s shores at the side of William the Conqueror.” Much against his will and nature, Marsh has returned to England upon the death of his brother to take over as head of the family and run its vast estate called Justice Hall in Berkshire.
    What Holmes and Russell have to discover is whether the logical heir to the family fortune, a brave and gentle young man named Gabriel, was really shot as a traitor during World War One. These battlefield executions are at the social heart of King’s new book. She also finds time to condemn with brisk irony the shooting of hapless birds by a hunting party of upperclass boobies and the abuse and neglect of female nurses and ambulance drivers.
    That bird-hunting scene is a tremendous set piece, starring Russell (who can throw a stone and knock a bird out of the sky, to the amazement of her snooty hosts) and Iris, Marsh’s lesbian wife—a wonderful character who should become a series regular. There’s also a whirlwind trip to Canada, with moving results, and even the odd flash of humor. “ ‘Russell,’ he said. At the first touch of that gentle, affectionate voice, I nearly leapt to my feet and planted my back against the nearest wall: When Holmes stoops to wheedle, God help us all…”
    AN EXPERIMENT IN TREASON, by Bruce Alexander (Putnam)
    The fascinating enigma of Benjamin Franklin—poseur, philanderer, putative scientist, politician and patriot—is the fuel which drives Bruce Alexander’s formidable narrative engine in this ninth story about blind London magistrate Sir John