Thoreau on Wolf Hill

September 22, 2014
During the winter of 1847, consumption rages through the small community of Plumford, Mass., in Beth and Ben Oak’s enjoyable second Henry David Thoreau mystery (after 2013’s Thoreau at Devil’s Perch). Thoreau’s friend Dr. Adam Walker, who has returned to Plumford from Boston to take over his late physician grandfather’s practice, must contend with the superstitious Solomon Whitty, who insists that vampirism is responsible for the deaths attributed to the illness. Whitty goes so far as to dig up the corpse of his dead niece, Hetty, to prevent her from rising from the grave and sucking the life out of her sister, Joanna. The subsequent murder of a former student of Thoreau’s, with wounds suggesting that his throat was torn out by some mysterious creature, raises the ante. Walker is an able Watsonian sidekick to the Holmes-like Thoreau, and the solution is even cleverer than in the previous book. Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune Agency.