Carver’s Truth

Set in 1871, Rennison’s middling second thriller featuring a Victorian version of Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion and Magersfontein Lugg (after 2014’s Carver’s Quest) finds Adam Carver, an author who’s also a “sometime traveller, intelligencer and occasional photographer,” back in London after carrying out covert work for the Foreign Office in Turkey. Carver’s handler and friend, Richard Sunman, asks him to trace a missing woman, actress and dancer Dolly Delaney, who is of interest to the Foreign Office for reasons Sunman doesn’t share. Carver agrees, despite the lack of detail, and, aided by his manservant, Quintus Devlin, the brawn to his brains, begins to search for Delaney, a quest that takes him to York and eventually overseas. Carver’s inquiries soon put him in harm’s way, but the familiar central story line is less interesting than a subplot involving revelations about Carver’s late father, a railway baron. The father apparently took his own life after his fraudulently acquired fortune vanished. The lack of memorable characters is a serious weakness. (Nov.)