cover image Shadowed by Death: An Oliver Wright WW2 Mystery

Shadowed by Death: An Oliver Wright WW2 Mystery

Mary Adler. Dancing Dog, $14.95 trade paper (296p) ISBN 978-1-7320097-0-7

Set in 1944 San Francisco, Adler’s superior second whodunit featuring homicide detective Oliver Wright (after 2014’s In the Shadow of Lies) finds Wright, who has returned to the U.S. from combat in the Pacific with only one good leg, serving as a JAG lieutenant. He has mixed feelings about his first homicide case: “regret for the victim and her family, and an unseemly exhilaration at being able to do the job I loved—a job that required someone to die violently, unwillingly.” This time, a woman resembling Greta Garbo, whose battered body was found in the Presidio by a passerby, clings to life, having suffered two severe head wounds. The only clue to her identity is a flyer advertising a fund-raising talk the previous day about the Hidden Children of Europe, which was given by Sophia Nirenska and Marek Landau, Polish Jewish resistance fighters. Before Wright can locate Nirenska and Landau, they, too, are attacked, leading him to suspect a link between the crimes. Fans of Sheldon Russell’s Hook Runyon series will find this a more than acceptable substitute. [em](BookLife) [/em]