The Twelfth Night Murder

At the start of Rutherford’s appealing third Restoration mystery (after 2013’s The Scottish Play Murder), a soothsayer warns prostitute-turned-actress Suzanne Thornton to avoid the River Thames, as well as her favorite pub, the Goat and Boar. Suzanne can’t stay away from her friends at the Goat and Boar, where one night she spots a flirtatious boy “just beginning his entry to manhood” dressed as a girl. The next morning the boy’s mutilated body is fished out of the Thames. Suzanne is capable of a bawdy line (on expensive wine: “Anything less would not be worth the swallowing, much like most men I’ve known”), and of (somewhat anachronistic) pique when women are insulted, or when it’s suggested that boys turning tricks by definition could not be raped. Most readers will spot the murderer’s identity a mile away, but all will find Suzanne a charming narrator. (Sept.)