Frobisher's Savage: A Joan and Matthew Stock Mystery

In 1576, Elizabethan explorerer Martin Frobisher captured a ``round-faced, squinty-eyed, foul-smelling'' savage on the icy coast of Greenland and took him back to England, naming him Adam Nemo. Twenty years later, Adam is a servant on a Chelmsford estate bordering the prosperous farm of John Crookback, father of his only friend, deaf, dumb and perhaps half-witted Nicholas Crookback. One Sunday, Adam discovers the stabbed bodies of John, his wife and two other children stuffed down a well. He and Nicholas quickly become suspects. Custody of the defenseless friends is entrusted to mild-mannered clothier Matthew Stock and his staunch wife, Joan. Although Joan's feminism may be a bit ahead of her time, Tourney offers his usual well-researched historical background in this, the eighth, Stock mystery, following Witness of Bones. As Crookback's two grown daughters howl for vengeance, the discovery of a letter from a London goldsmith sets the Stocks on an investigation that almosts costs Matthew his life. Fraud, vigilantes and a chase by a posse in a snowstorm move the story along smartly. (Oct.)