The St. Simons Island Club: A John Le Brun Novel

Set in 1908 and early 1909, Monahan’s fourth John Le Brun mystery (after 2003’s The Manhattan Island Club) starts with a clever art theft. Thirteen valuable paintings have disappeared from a crate in a locked warehouse in Brunswick, Ga. The warehouse’s owner, Merriweather Gooderly, is desperate to avoid liability. When the 60-year-old Le Brun, who has resigned as the sheriff of Glynn County, quickly solves the puzzle, Gooderly offers him membership in an exclusive club headquartered on Georgia’s St. Simons Island. Back in New York City, where Le Brun has opened an investigative agency, he receives an unsigned note on J.P. Morgan’s letterhead asking him to find out who fatally stabbed Herbert Moore, the owner of over a dozen buildings in the city. Though Le Brun doubts the note is really from the financier, he decides to pursue Moore’s killer. Unfortunately, the main plot line follows a predictable course that comes as a letdown after the novel’s imaginative opening. (Dec.)