Jack Gatland’s Silver and the Christmas Caper – An Enjoyable Mystery

Silver and the Christmas Caper is the second in author Jack Gatland’s new series featuring Laura Carlyle and Sebastian Silver. You can read my review of the first book, Silver and Sunday Cypher here. They are both very enjoyable and interesting mysteries that feature an unusual hero: Sebastian Silver is a persona of Phillip Morris, a mild-mannered retired accountant from Boston. He has read about espionage and police detectives obsessively, and he has amassed an arsenal of tools and weapons. However, he can only use them when he assumes the personality of Sebastian Silver, and to do that, he must wear a trilby hat. When he is Silver, he becomes a brave, brilliant, and resourceful private investigator. Without his trilby, he reverts back to the shy and retiring Morris.

His partner in criminal investigation is Laura Carlyle, the widow of a highly placed British diplomat. Her social skills and general smarts complement Silver’s skill set perfectly. Rounding out the team is Laura’s college student grandson, Kyle, and her aunt, Celia. Celia does not suffer fools gladly, and she keeps everyone on an even keel.

Silver and the Christmas Caper begins with a cleaning woman, Dorothy Hartwell, in ancient St. Botolph’s church in the Cotswold village of Ashwood St. Botolph’s. It’s early morning, three days before the important Christmas Eve service, and Dorothy comes across a body at the foot of the stairs going down to the crypt. It’s the body of the church’s priest, Father Patrick. He is wearing a shabby overcoat, and his head is resting on a pile of hymnbooks.

His death is soon ruled an accident, but an extremely old and valuable pyx (an ornamental container for communion elements that priests used to take them to homebound parishioners) is missing. The pyx and other sacramental pieces belong to Lord Robert Sinclair and his wife, Lady Margaret. Lady Margaret hires Silver and Carlyle to recover the pyx for the Christmas Eve service, and when they begin their investigation they quickly realize that Father Patrick was most likely murdered.

They soon find themselves embroiled in a tangle of village politics and secrets going back centuries. Just before he died, Fr. Patrick had been researching the history of St. Botolph’s, and he had uncovered some interesting details about the Sinclair family’s traditional ownership of the religious treasures. The Sinclairs were deeded the land and the church’s possessions by Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Roman Catholic monasteries.

The local expert on antiquities, Geoffrey Thornton, has also been researching old documents, and he is convinced that St. Botolph’s contains even more treasures that were hidden in it by Catholic priests to prevent Cromwell from confiscating them. Also, there appears to be a longstanding feud between the Sinclairs and the Hartwells (yes, the family of the cleaning woman) over who should have been chosen by Henry VIII to rule over Ashwood St. Botolph’s.

Throw in a corrupt local policeman, a new young village doctor with a complicated past, an ambitious young priest hoping to replace Fr. Patrick, as well as lots of gossipy villagers, and you have a very tangled web for Silver and Carlyle to unravel. Gatland does an great job keeping the reader in suspense right up to the final unveiling of the culprit. The device of Silver switching personalities with Morris is very clever, and his teammates take it in stride. In fact, Laura goes out of her way to give the shy and humble Morris credit when it’s deserved.

Gatland already has the third installment in this series ready to be released in April (he’s one of the most prolific authors I’ve ever come across!), and I can’t wait to see what Sebastian’s and Laura’s next adventure will be!

Jack Gatland’s Silver and the Sunday Cypher

After slogging my way through the enjoyable but lengthy Bleak House, I decided to pick up a new book that Amazon’s algorithm recommended to me: Jack Gatland’s Silver and the Sunday Cypher. It turned out to be the perfect follow-up to a relatively dark Victorian masterpiece.

Silver and the Sunday Cypher is a fun and fast-paced thriller that features 64-year-old widow, Laura Carlyle, who is thrust into a cloak and dagger world of secret societies, murder, espionage, and international diplomacy. It begins with the assassination by poisoning of Harry Farrell in broad daylight in front of a London church. Farrell has been compiling a dossier on a shadowy group that is called The Calendar. Its members go by days of the week (shades of G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday), with a mysterious “Mr. Sunday” at the top of The Calendar’s hierarchy.

Laura is visited by Farrell’s widow, Rebecca, who tells her her late husband left instructions to contact Laura is he died under mysterious circumstances. The official explanation for Farrell’s death is natural causes, but Rebecca has her doubts. Laura has no idea why Farrell would be connected to her, but he reluctantly agrees to look into the case, and before she knows it, she is a target herself.

Fortunately, she has the assistance of her elderly yet active Aunt Celia – whose acerbic wit is a highlight of the novel – as well as her college-age grandson, Kyle. She is also being shadowed by a silver-haired man who, according to Laura’s neighbor, looks like “Pierce Brosnan”. This man turns out to be Sebastian Silver, agent extraordinaire. He always wears a trilby hat and carries a walking stick that is sometimes a taser, sometimes sheathing a sword, and sometimes just a stick. Whenever Laura gets into a tricky situation, Sebastian is there to rescue her.

However, he is a slippery character who never reveals too much about himself. Is he a retired member of The Calendar, trying to atone for past misdeeds? Is he an MI5 agent, or a lone wolf? As the story progresses, Laura learns to not trust anyone, even what she thought was true about her late husband.

Gatland does a great job keeping the reader on the edge of his or her seat, and even when very surprising details about Silver are revealed, it’s not the end of the story. Silver and the Sunday Cypher was just published in September, and there are already plans to publish another adventure in December. It looks like this is the start of a very entertaining adventure/mystery series!