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.

When a Japanese diplomat is murdered, and Cyrus Barker is the prime suspect, Barker and sidekick Llewelyn must work against the clock to find the real killer.
In London of 1890, the first Japanese diplomatic delegation arrives in London to open an embassy in London. Cyrus Barker, private enquiry agent and occasional agent for the Foreign Service Office, is enlisted to display his personal Japanese garden to the visiting dignitaries.
Later that night, Ambassador Toda is shot and killed in his office and Cyrus Barker is discovered across the street, watching the very same office, in possession of a revolver with one spent cartridge.
Arrested by the Special Branch for the crime, Barker is vigorously interrogated and finally released due to the intervention of his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, and his solicitor. With the London constabulary still convinced of his guilt, Barker is hired by the new Japanese ambassador to find the real murderer.
In a case that takes leads Barker and Llewelyn deep into parts of London's underworld, on paths that lead deep into Barker's own mysterious personal history, Old Scores is the finest yet in Will Thomas's critically acclaimed series.

My Review:

Nine books into the Barker & Llewelyn series, the adventures in which and of which are chronicled by the pen of Cyrus Barker’s once-apprentice and now fully licensed assistant private enquiry agent Thomas Llewelyn, it’s not a surprise to either the reader or Llewelyn that Barker has plenty of old scores to settle in this middle of his fascinating but hard-knock life.

It’s possibly even less of a surprise to Llewelyn that his ‘Guv’ has made more than enough enemies over the course of that remarkable life that there are an equal if not greater number of people who have old scores to settle with HIM.

The case in Old Scores begins seemingly innocuously, with the visit of a group of Japanese dignitaries to Barker’s authentic and beautiful Japanese garden – a sanctuary hidden behind his London townhouse.

After a frenzy of preparation, the visit itself seems to go quite well. With two notable exceptions. The British official escorting the party is a boor who displays his contempt for these prestigious guests with his every utterance. And it’s clear to Thomas Llewelyn that his Guv is already well acquainted with one member of the party – and that whatever history lies between Barker and the Japanese official is of long and painful standing.

(The treatment of the Japanese delegation by British officials is reminiscent of their contemptuous treatment of Chinese officials in the excellent The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan – in spite of the several decades that lie between the two mysteries.)

The story in Old Scores is a combination of the chance that ‘the enemy of my enemy might be my friend’ – at least temporarily – and ‘too many cooks spoil not just the soup but the whole entire meal’.

The Japanese delegation is fractured beyond repair even before the members start dropping like flies. The British are trying to gain a foothold in Japan to counter American ambitions in Asia, the Japanese want to oust the Americans from the position of power they took by force in 1853 AND they have imperial ambitions of their own, while the question of whether the future of the country lies in returning to the traditionalism and isolationism of the past or is best served by embracing the world as it is in hopes of controlling as much of it as possible. The members of the delegation display all of these possible outcomes in microcosm – and with deadly results.

And in the middle of it all is a contest between Cyrus Barker and the man who murdered his wife – back when Barker was considerably younger and possibly just a bit more naive than the implacable man he became after that terrible loss.

Escape Rating A-: It’s not really a surprise that I picked Old Scores (and also the preceding short story, An Awkward Way to Die – which was fun but there just wasn’t enough there there for a review) out of the virtually towering TBR pile over the weekend. The Barker & Llewelyn series has become a comfort read for me, portraying a world that may be more than a century gone but is easy to slip right back into thanks to the pen of author Will Thomas. I needed to get AWAY, as far as mentally possible, from the combination of anxiety and vitriol that marks this year’s U.S. election.

So I returned to the Victorian setting where Cyrus Barker always gets his man and his second in command, Thomas Llewelyn, does his best to chronicle the case, make sure the bills get paid, and support his ‘Guv’ in every way possible. Even when Barker is doing his usual damndest to keep all of his cards VERY close to his vest – up to and including the cards that Llewelyn – as his backup – really, really needs to know.

This is a case that DEFINITELY has its awkward aspects. Barker keeps entirely too many secrets about his past. Which he’s entitled to, but not if those secrets threaten to get his whole entire household killed or imprisoned. Which in this case they definitely are.

The result is that Llewelyn flails around at points when he shouldn’t have to. This is a case that hinges on things that his Guv hasn’t told him – secrets that are 20+ years old at this point. One can empathize both with Barker’s desire to let the past remain in the past AND Llewelyn’s desire not to end up dead.

We don’t expect Llewelyn to get to the solution ahead of his boss, but neither do we expect his boss to leave him quite so completely in the dark. It’s a bit of a conundrum that leaves our chronicler stumbling around in that dark more than is usual for this series. I’m here for the competence porn, and Barker made that more difficult than usual on several fronts.

But in the end, what carries the story, as always, are the characters and their ever more deeply entwined relationships. So this book did exactly what I picked it up for – it took me far, far away from the problems of today.

In the end, the story does reveal a very great deal about Cyrus Barker before he became the man that Llewelyn met in the first book in the series, Some Danger Involved. I expect to see more consequences of this book’s revelations in the following books in the series.

I’ll certainly be picking up Blood Is Blood the next time I’m looking for a comforting murder to sink my reading teeth into.

When two people are murdered during a secret government conference on a secluded island estate, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker must find the killer among the guests before it’s too late.
At the request of Her Majesty’s government, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker agrees to take on his least favorite kind of assignment—he’s to provide security for a secret conference with the French government. The conference is to take place on the private estate of Lord Hargrave on a remote island off the coast of Cornwall. The goal of the conference is the negotiation of a new treaty with France. The cover story for the gathering is a house party—an attempt to introduce Lord Hargrave’s two unmarried sons to potential mates.
But shortly after the parties land at the island, Lord Hargrave is killed by a sniper shot, and the French ambassador’s head of security is found stabbed to death. The only means of egress from the island—a boat—has been sent away, and the means of signaling for help has been destroyed. Trapped in a manor house with no way of escape, Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, must uncover which among them is the killer before the next victim falls.

My Review:

In this eighth entry in the Barker & Llewelyn series, after the private enquiry agents’ immersion in the deepest of London’s hells in pursuit of Jack the Ripper in Anatomy of Evil, Cyrus Barker finds himself far outside his usual stomping and stalking grounds, caught literally between Scylla and Charybdis, at the furthermost west point of the Scilly Isles maneuvered into a case he’d really rather not have taken.

But Scylla in the person of the woman who holds his heart, Mrs. Philippa Ashleigh, has conspired with her dear friend Lady Hargrave to invite Barker – with Llewelyn as his aide-de-camp, assistant, general factotum and whatever other jobs Barker needs him to turn his hand to – in tow. Mrs. Ashleigh has been attempting, for months if not longer, to drag Barker to a country house party in spite of how little he desires to attend such a thing.

Mrs. Ashleigh’s manipulations, however, have dovetailed all too neatly with those of the government, the monstrous Charybdis of this analogy. Lord Hargrave has planned a secret meeting with his old friend – and his daughter’s godfather – the French ambassador, at a house party on his estate in the Scilly Isles. Hargrave commissions Barker and Llewelyn to provide security for the clandestine meeting. While Barker protests, and rightfully so, that this is not the sort of work at which his agency excels, because two men simply are not enough to get the job done, the combined machinations of his government and his lady have forced his hand.

At first, Barker dreads the prospect of endless boredom and terrible attempts to make – or avoid – small talk with the other guests. His hopes (or fears) of that boredom are dashed before the end of the first evening, when his host is killed by a sniper, the French ambassador’s head of security is stabbed to death and the only means of leaving the remote island are destroyed.

The country house party swiftly changes from a pleasure trip to a siege, as the guests and staff are picked off one by one in a multitude of methods that seem deadly and/or devastating by capricious turns.

The killer clearly has an agenda, and its up to Barker and Llewelyn – in spite of the distrust they face from ALL of the guests – to figure out who has meticulously planned to eliminate every single person on Godolphin Island until there are none left.

Escape Rating A-: First, it may seem like I picked this one up much too soon after Anatomy of Evil – and it’s true that this one does suffer a bit in comparison. But in truth I read the earlier book on the plane home from San Diego last month, and took my trip to Hell Bay on the plane home from London last week.

At least it wasn’t a boat on MY return trip.

I did enjoy Hell Bay for its character development, but it did suffer a bit in comparison to Anatomy of Evil, which, with its deep dive into London’s Whitechapel district and its nail-biting hunt for Jack the Ripper – as well as its plausible solution to that historical conundrum – was an absolutely compelling read.

Hell Bay, which provided some fantastic insights into the relationship between Cyrus Barker and Mrs. Philippa Ashleigh – and do I ever wonder where that’s going after this book – was quite a departure for the detective duo.

And not in the best way, as this story takes Barker & Llewelyn out of their London setting and puts them in a place that is not suited to them or their methods. These particular fish, in spite of being in the middle of the ocean, are very much out of water.

The place they were out of that water, storywise, was all too similar to Erik Larson’s No One Goes Alone, and of course Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None – even if the means and motives for both of those stories turned out to be different. Also, I was a bit disappointed with No One Goes Alone so the resemblance between the stories did not serve as a pleasant harbinger for my read of this one.

One of the things that I did like about this one – and it’s something that has been true with other stories in this series where Barker is on the case – is the way that the crimes and their motives turned out not to be the seemingly obvious ones, but those more obvious possibilities turned into rather tasty red herrings for the detectives.

And, as stated earlier, while we still don’t know as much as Thomas Llewelyn would like about Cyrus Barker’s background, he did observe a great deal about the relationship between his ‘Guv’ and Mrs. Ashleigh and it’s clear that she is going to be having, perhaps not exactly second thoughts but certainly some serious rethinking about that relationship and where she thinks its going vs. where Barker will ever be willing to go – and not just because I seriously doubt the man will EVER be willing to attend another country house party.

We’ll certainly see in the books to come, as my catch up read of the Barker & Llewelyn series continues with the short story An Awkward Way to Die and the following full-length novel, Old Scores, the next times I need a book that is guaranteed to pull me in and sweep me away – as this series always does – even if, on this particular occasion, it also swept me a bit out to sea.