Five Days, Five Dead: The China Bohannon Series

Set in Spokane, Wash., in the 1890s, Crigger’s vivid third China Bohannon novel (after 2017’s Two Feet Below) finds China still trying to persuade her uncle, Monk Howe, and his partner, Gratton Doyle, of the Doyle & Howe Detective Agency, where she serves as “bookkeeper, office manager, and general dogsbody,” that she’s as good a detective as they are. She gets her chance to prove it when Sepp Ansel, the owner of a string of gambling establishments, arrives at the agency in need of help. Kidnappers have grabbed Anka Kalb, the sister of Sepp’s imported Austrian bride-to-be, Jutte, and are asking for a $2,000 ransom. Monk and Gratton are happy for the business, but they go off in a wrong direction, while the resilient and resourceful China pursues a more promising line of inquiry, which involves interviewing first a hotel bellhop and then a haberdashery worker. She also gets a little male help that she doesn’t need. Crigger’s colorful historical shows that you can’t keep a good woman down. (Dec.)