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THE JACKAL MAN
By: Kate Ellis
Piatkus Publishing: London
2011 (HC)
In this, the fifteenth novel in the Wesley Peterson
mysteries, Kate Ellis explores the dark side of family relationships and
whether evil can be handed down through the generations. This brooding
novel opens with the attempted strangulation of a young woman, Clare Mayers,
on a lonely Devon road as she walks home from a local pub. The attacker is
interrupted; Clare lives, and under police questioning her damaged vocal
chords allow her to mutter, “Dog’s head” to the DC Trish Walton, the
investigating officer, and colleague to DI Wesley Peterson. Circumstantial
evidence seems to point to Clare’s ex-boyfriend, Alan James, as the
assailant.
Meanwhile, Wesley’s college chum and best friend,
County Archaeologist Neil Watson has been hired by Caroline Varley, heiress
to Varlet Castle, and the fabulously extensive Egyptian collection that
takes up much of the rambling old building’s square footage. Caroline hopes
to deed over the castle and perhaps the collection to the National Trust,
but first wishes to ascertain the depth and breadth of the collection and
its value. The vast array of artifacts had been collected by Caroline’s
great grandfather, the Victorian era industrialist and adventurer, Sir
Frederick Varley. As it happens, and somewhat to Neil’s growing irritation,
a local semi-successful writer named Robert Delaware has taken up residence
at the castle as he researches and attempts to write a biography of Sir
Frederick.
While providing background information to Neil on the
castle and its history, Caroline admits that it had also frightened her,
even as a little girl, and off-handedly mentioned that her great-uncle John
Varley, son of Sir Frederick, had, according to historic accounts, killed
four women before hanging himself on the castle grounds. Neil agrees to
undertake the inventory but because his archaeological experience lies in
areas other than Egyptology, he seeks out and receives the expertise of Dr.
Andrew Beredace of the British Museum, who hastens to join Neil at the
Dartmoor castle.
Meanwhile, Wesley Peterson’s life becomes more complex
as his former supervisor from the Metropolitan (London) Arts and Antiquities
Squad seeks Wesley’s aid in breaking up a ring of criminals traced to Devon
who have been trafficking in Egyptian antiquities—even as a second assault
on a young woman is reported. But this time the attack is brutally
successful and the young woman, an au pair working for a locally
prominent family is found garroted and disemboweled, with a carved figure of
Anubis, the Egyptian jackal-headed god of death next to the body. Clare
Mayers, the surviving earlier victim, readily identifies the carved
figurine’s likeness to the “dog’s head” her assailant was wearing when he
attacked her. The killer seems to be following the practices and patterns
followed for the mummification of dead in ancient Egypt and dons the jackal
head for purposes of anonymity, ritual and terror—or all three.
While Andrew Beredace busily inventories the Varley
Castle Egyptian treasure trove, Neil finds himself drawn inexorably to the
mystery of John Varley’s crimes around the turn of the 20th
Century. His researches uncover a startling fact: the female victims of
John Varley were garroted and disemboweled in the very same fashion as the
victim in his friend Wesley’s latest case!
The situation grows even direr as a third young woman
is attacked and killed—with all assaults taking place within a three-mile
radius. Neil reports his historical researches to Wesley and the police now
realize that someone is repeating the crimes of John Varley, committed more
than one hundred years earlier—and there will likely be more unless they can
stop him at once.
I have stated in previous reviews of this series that
Kate Ellis simply gets better with each new novel—and The Jackal Man
is no excerption. It is tightly written, the drama and intensity build with
each turn of the page, and the red herrings she strews about leaves the
reader delightfully bewildered until the stunning and at least for this
reader, completely unanticipated denouement. I do wish however that
Ms. Ellis would focus a bit more on archaeologist Neil Watson. Even after
fifteen books, he remains something of a cipher. We’ve learned much about
Wesley Peterson and his background and family—and he is a very sympathetic
and understatedly heroic protagonist—but it would be interesting to learn
more about Neil.
But as always, four trowels for Kate Ellis’s most
recent Wesley Peterson mystery!
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