Blood Is Blood (Barker & Llewelyn, #10) by Will Thomas Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Barker & Llewelyn #10
Pages: 293
Published by Minotaur Books on November 13, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
A bombing injures private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker, leaving it up to his soon-to-be-married junior partner Thomas Llewelyn to find the person trying to murder them both before it's too late—in the newest mystery in Will Thomas's beloved series.
In 19th century London, Cyrus Barker and his associate Thomas Llewelyn are renowned private enquiry agents, successfully employed by the highest levels of Her Majesty's government as well as private citizens. Their success, however, has led to their acquiring a powerful group of enemies, many of whom are determined to have their revenge.
At least one of those enemies is responsible for a bombing of their offices that puts Cyrus Barker into the hospital and endangers Thomas Llewelyn's rapidly forthcoming nuptials. To add to the confusion, Barker's long-lost brother Caleb turns up on the rubble of their doorstep not long after the not-quite-fatal bombing.
Unsure of Caleb and warned about him by Barker, Thomas reluctantly accepts Caleb's help both with a new case that comes in as well as trying to pinpoint which of Barker's enemies is making a move against them. As Thomas works his way through their enemy list, someone else is winnowing down that one by one those enemies are dying.
With time running out—and his bride-to-be reconsidering their marriage—Llewelyn must (with the sick-bed bound Barker's help) uncover the killer and the plot before it's too late.
My Review:
Many of Cyrus Barker’s and Thomas Llewelyn’s cases begin in the middle, with Llewelyn telling the story of how he ended up walking, figuratively if not literally, in the valley of the shadow of death, only for the story to then loop back to the beginning to provide the details of how he found himself in that fix in the first place.
This particular entry in the series doesn’t have to use that literary device as it begins with several explosive devices causing an actual ‘BOOM!’ under the offices of Cyrus Barker’s private enquiry agency.
The devices were VERY cleverly planted, quietly placed in a tunnel dug directly under Barker’s impressive and rather heavy desk, in an office surrounded with equally heavy bookshelves, causing the supporting beams to crack and the office to collapse under its own weight – with Barker in the middle and crushed by the weight of his own desk.
The rest of the office followed, but slowly enough that Llewelyn and their receptionist Jenkins were able to escape the worst of the damage. Barker was considerably less lucky, having to be dug out from under the collapse with a shattered leg but thankfully unconscious. Alive, at least, if not at the moment whole.
And currently unable to investigate his own rather pressing case, leaving his associate Thomas Llewelyn in charge of the agency and that case, a few short weeks ahead of his own impending nuptials to a woman he has loved for six years and has already lost once. And might again if he doesn’t solve this case before Barker’s past catches up with Llewelyn’s present and blows his future sky high.
Escape Rating A-: I picked this up right after I finished Unquiet Spirits, because I was still very much in the mood for something similar, but didn’t want to immediately dive into the next book in that series. As Barker and Llewelyn are very much in dialogue with Holmes and Watson, set in the same period but portraying that period from a rather different perspective, it seemed logical (Holmes again) to leap from that 1889 to this one.
The leap from one to the other was MUCH shorter than I expected, as both stories dive deeply into the pasts of their respective, but equally close-mouthed, principals , men who are just as secretive about their pasts as each other, leaving their chroniclers scrambling to catch up with the lack of information about things that they really, really needed to know.
While Llewelyn is the one handling this investigation nearly in its entirety, the case itself is utterly wrapped up in Barker’s past in two distinct ways.
The motive for the bombing is rooted in Barker’s more public past. After all, it’s not as if Barker hasn’t made PLENTY of enemies in his work catching the worst and most ingenious criminals. It’s up to Llewelyn to comb through Barker’s normally meticulous but currently rather scattered files to figure out which of those criminals might themselves or through an agent have been in position to commit this particular crime. While the original list might have been long, the list of actual possibilities is rather short. Barker has always been very good at his work, and most of his cases close with either the clang of prison gates being shut or shovels of dirt falling on a coffin.
But the trail keeps going cold as suspects and informants keep turning up dead – inconveniently just as Llewelyn is about to reach them. While Barker is far from helpful at providing advice, encouragement (not that he’s ever been good at that) or even basic information.
Even more frustrating for Llewelyn are the hints about Barker’s private past in the sudden arrival of his older brother Caleb from America, claiming to be a Pinkerton agent, who is obviously pursuing his own agenda while at the same time interfering with his younger brother’s household and Llewelyn’s investigation to an annoying degree.
In the end, this is Thomas Llewelyn’s story, not Llewelyn telling Barker’s story or a story where Barker is directing and holding all the cards. Barker’s secretiveness in this particular case is to a specific purpose, and when that purpose is revealed it forces Llewelyn to rethink everything that has happened since the bombing.
Except his frustrations with Caleb Barker, now thankfully on his way back to America. As curious as Llewelyn is about the hints the older Barker dropped about his ‘Guv’s’ early life, he’s MUCH happier with Caleb Barker on the other side of the Atlantic. Frankly, this reader was as well, and quite possibly, so was Cyrus Barker.
I’ll be returning to this series the very next time the mood strikes with Lethal Pursuit. The latest book in the series, Season of Death, is coming out in April of 2025. I’m highly, in fact, very highly, tempted to skip ahead to it and see what Barker and Llewelyn are up to in their now, but I’m trying to resist. We’ll see.
