Starred Review. Rock's superb historical debut opens with 28-year-old Charles du Luc arriving in 1686 Paris to serve as a teacher of rhetoric in a Jesuit school. He's spent seven years in the Society of Jesus and a stint in the French army that left him with a permanently damaged left arm. Soon after Charles takes up his position, Philippe Douté, a 16-year-old student under his charge, flees the school's grounds and disappears. A day later, a horseman almost runs down Philippe's younger brother in the street under circumstances that make Charles suspect that one enemy has targeted both boys. When Philippe's strangled corpse turns up in a latrine, Charles gets approval to look into the murder. His inquiry soon leads to danger for himself and his family. With an experienced writer's ease, Rock incorporates details of the political issues of the day into a suspenseful story line. Fans of Brother Cadfael, another military man turned priest sleuth, will be pleased.
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Starred Review First-novelist Rock brings firsthand knowledge of dance, choreography, acting, police investigation, and teaching to what is hopefully the beginning of a mystery series set in seventeenth-century Paris and featuring Jesuit teacher Charles du Luc. Perspicaciously sent to the famous Jesuit college of Louis le Grand after aiding a Huguenot friend, Maître du Luc, as rhetoric teacher and stagehand, throws himself into the students’ highly metaphorical dance production of The Labors of Hercules. When Charles chases a missing student off campus and later finds the same boy dead, suspicion falls on him as a newcomer, and finding the actual killer becomes both a personal mission and a source of deadly danger. The strength of this fascinating historical mystery lies in its characters, who are neither wholly holy nor fully evil but are affectionately and colorfully presented for the reader’s consideration. Plenty of derring-do and boyish mischief sprinkled into the plot make this a fun read, and Charles’ thought-provoking struggles as he questions his vocation lend added depth. A fine counterpart to S. J. Parris’ suspenseful historical-mystery novel Heresy (2010), which dramatizes religious strife in an earlier era, and similar in theme to P. D. James’ Death in Holy Orders (2001), Rock’s novel boasts a style all its own and is sure to satisfy those eager for a great new historical mystery. --Jen Baker
