Dolores Gordon-Smith, A Hundred Thousand Dragons
Severn House (c) 2010
This is the fourth mystery featuring Jack Haldean. He's a writer in 1920s England who finds himself investigating murders, generally in cooperation with a Scotland Yard detective (Bill Rackham , who does appear, somewhat tangentially, here). Haldean becomes involved in the death that occurs on the night of a fancy dress ball in rural England. The dead man has been burned to a crisp. which makes identifying him difficult, and raises the question of whether it was an accident or murder. It was murder, of course. And it was a murder that had its origin in wartime Europe.
As Haldean and the local police superintendent investigate, it becomes (slowly) apparent that the murder had its origins in the war, and likely somehow tied to archeological explorations in the middle east. And that large sums of gold (a thousand pounds or more) are likely involved. (An ounce of gold in the early 1920s would have been worth about $20 --or, nearly £5 per English Pounds. A thousand pounds of gold would be 16,000 ounces--just over $1 million (£80,000). (The equivalent of over $20 million today). And Haldean's treatment in captivity (told in a fairly lengthy flashback) during the War plays a significant role.
By a little over half way through, Haldean decides that he has to return to the Middle East to confront the murderer and deal with his own prior encounters with him.
This is not the best book in what is (for me, at any rate) a marginal series. The identity of the murder/gold thief is clear by around half-way through; the rest of the story of getting Haldean (and a newly-married couple, whoa re friends of his) to the "lost" city of Petra and confronting the bad guy. There are some good moments--the best ones revolve around Haldean's interpretation of some fairly obscure documents. Gordon-Smith does an excellent job of depicting the desert. But by the time we get to the desert there's little suspense remaining.
