January 1, 2020
A Colonial farmer does everything he can, even detective work, to avoid hard labor. Years after Will Rees (Simply Dead, 2018, etc.) fought the British in the American Revolution, he finds himself battling the boredom of life in rural Maine. Instead of listening to the pleas of his wife, Lydia, and sowing the fields to provide food for his family, he spends his time weaving so that he'll have an excuse to travel the countryside selling his cloth. When Asher's Circus comes to the nearby town of Durham, Rees finds an even better reason for daily trips away from the farm. Asher, bareback rider Pip Boudreaux, and beautiful tightrope walker Bambola welcome Rees into their colorful world, enchanting him with their exotic costumes and skills. Shem and Leah, two youngsters from a nearby Shaker community, are enchanted too and run off in hopes of seeing a performance. When Leah's found dead in a nearby field, Rees has an even better excuse to flee the drudgery of the farm: Constable Rouge asks him to help investigate Leah's murder. But Rees spends more time having his fortune read at Bambola's tarot table than sleuthing. Eventually the case is cracked more or less by chance through the efforts of an unlikely deputy. All work avoidance and no detection makes Kuhns' latest entry a dull read.
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January 13, 2020
In Kuhns’s underwhelming eighth mystery set in the late 18th century (after 2019’s Simply Dead), weaver Will Rees is unsettled to spot his nemesis, circuit magistrate Piggy Hanson, who once drew up warrants falsely charging Rees with murder and his wife with witchcraft, in Durham, Maine, where a traveling circus is in town. Rees ducks inside the circus to avoid Hanson. Meanwhile, Leah, a 14-year-old member of a Shaker community, disappears after sneaking out of her family’s house to go see the circus; her strangled and raped corpse is soon found near a major roadway. The Durham constable, Simon Rouge, arrests a circus member, Pip Boudreaux, who appears to match a witness’s description of a horseman the witness saw riding away from the crime scene. Aware that Rouge may be mistaken, the Shakers hire Rees, who has a reputation as a sleuth, to conduct his own investigation, which leads him to consider Hanson as a suspect in Leah’s death and similar crimes around Maine. The credible period detail compensates only in part for an average whodunit plotline. Hopefully, Kuhns will return to form next time.
March 1, 2020
In this eighth installment of Kuhns' Will Rees series, the action centers on the circus that has come to Durham, Maine, in April 1790. Rees should be plowing and sowing seeds to provide for his wife, Lydia, and their children, but he finds himself longing to weave and sell his wares to nearby farms. Bored with farming, he takes an afternoon to check out the visiting circus and, on his way home, gets involved in the search for a young Shaker girl, who is eventually found dead in a nearby field. To further complicate matters, Rees notices among the onlookers his nemesis, Magistrate Hanson, whom he believes was responsible for falsely accusing him of murder and Lydia of witchcraft two years earlier (The Devil's Cold Dish, 2016). Meanwhile, Constable Rouge seeks out Rees to help him solve the murder, which leads Rees to befriending several of the circus performers. While the character of Rees comes across less vividly than it has in previous adventures, the setting and historical detail remain sharp, with strong, descriptive prose.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)