Maude Horton's Glorious Revenge

Starred review from December 18, 2023
Pook (Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter) delivers a brilliant historical about a woman’s search for the truth behind her sister’s death during an Arctic expedition. After a tantalizing prologue, Constance Horton, 20, disguises herself as a cabin boy to join the Makepeace on its 1849 journey to the Arctic in search of missing explorer Sir John Franklin, who sought the fabled Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Two years later, Constance’s sister, Maude, receives a letter stating only that Constance died by “misadventure.” Maude refuses to accept such a vague explanation, even though the British Admiralty is reluctant to provide her with further details about the accident. Eventually, a clerk surreptitiously hands over the diary that Constance kept while aboard the Makepeace. In it, Maude finds entries that cast suspicion on expedition scientist Edison Stowe. She cozies up to Stowe, accompanying him on a new—and rather grisly—business venture in order to extract whatever details she can about Constance’s death. Pook’s masterful pacing and meticulous attention to historical detail make this sing. Fans of Stuart Tarton’s high seas whodunits will be rapt. Agent: Madeleine Milburn, Madeleine Milburn Agency.

January 1, 2024
When famed British explorer Sir John Franklin's Arctic expedition fails to return to port, search-and-rescue missions set out to complete his quest to find the Northwest Passage. A stowaway on one such mission is the cabin boy, Jack Aldridge, who is actually Constance Horton, 20-year-old granddaughter of a respected London pharmacist. Constance's disappearance devastates her sister Maude, a trauma that escalates when Maude receives word that her sister has died under mysterious circumstances on the excursion. Armed with a diary Constance kept under her alias, Maude learns details of her sister's misadventures, uncovers clues as to how she met her death, and, more importantly, who was responsible. Pook burrows deep into Victorian England's macabre obsession with grotesque murders and public executions as her heroine follows the trail of the psychopathic Edison Stowe, Constance's bloodthirsty shipmate. In a stellar follow-up to her debut, Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter (2022), Pook once again weaves a rousing tale around the escapades of a bold, spirited, and cunning woman.

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February 1, 2024
In 1850, after learning about her younger sister's mysterious death aboard a British expedition vessel, Maud Horton takes it upon herself to track down the killer and exact her revenge. Though they were attached at the hip as young girls, Maude and Constance Horton could not have been more different. While Maude was scientifically minded and seemed content to spend the rest of her days working in their grandfather's apothecary, Constance was a romantic at heart and yearned to see the world beyond the grimy streets of London. In an act of rebellion, Constance disguised herself as a young man and stowed away on the Makepeace, a ship destined for the desolate sea lane known as the Northwest Passage. It was a risky move, to say the least, and the journey eventually led to her death. When Maude receives her sister's effects two years later, she can't shake the feeling that the truth is being kept from her, especially when she reads Constance's increasingly alarming diary entries. With evidence pointing toward Edison Stowe, the ship's scientist, having murdered Constance, Maude decides to join him on his latest grisly business venture: a rail tour of public hangings in England. In a novel packed with fascinating characters with a wide array of motivations, Maude takes a back seat to both Constance and Edison. Though the narrator is charming and clever, readers will find themselves wanting to spend more time sailing on the Makepeace with Constance or following Edison through smog-choked streets. Pook's writing really shines in her descriptions of London. People's obsession with murder was at an all-time high there, and huge profits were being made from public hangings, amid other grotesque trivializations of death. Pook paints a macabre image of a time when death was often more valuable than life itself. A spellbinding novel set in the frozen Arctic and in London during the height of murder mania.

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