Written in Red

April 11, 2016
In Dalton’s busy second mystery set in Oxford, England (after 2015’s The White Shepherd), the beating death of elderly historian James Lowell in his college rooms shocks Oxford University administrator Anna Hopkins. Anna later learns from Isadora Salzman, a friend and fellow dog-walker, that she and James were recruited back in the 1960s as part of the so-called Oxford Six, who did low-level espionage chores. Their handler was the charismatic and malevolent Tallis, who ordered them never to speak of their activities—and who once rescued James from an unspecified difficulty. One of the six died by violence 50 years earlier; now James’s murder forces Isadora to tell her story. Meanwhile, Anna is in the early stages of a relationship with an American soldier and getting reacquainted with an old friend who has blockbuster news of his own. Dog lovers will enjoy the canine interludes, but the introduction of a new and critical character at the end is unfair to readers who like to guess whodunit.

April 1, 2016
Unwelcome discoveries about a friend's past force her two closest companions to dig up details in order to protect her from things they don't know. Since trauma in her early life has left her a loner, Anna Hopkins is surprised to find herself content with her job at Oxford's Walsingham College and her small group of friends. Many of the changes in Anna's life stem from her decision to adopt Bonnie, a striking white shepherd who forces her into daily walks in the park and led to her befriending two other women walking dogs, Tansy and Isadora. Together, the three of them, along with their canine companions, pieced together the details of a murder (The White Shepherd, 2015, etc). Since then, Anna has settled into a more social routine, taking on Tansy as a roommate and becoming closer to Jake, Bonnie's original owner, despite his residence in America. Tansy has made changes too, seeking to make peace with her father and dating sweet if by-the-book Liam, an officer with the local police. Isadora, older than the other two friends, has always seemed strong and worldly, but an attack on a professor at Oxford changes all of that. Now Anna and Tansy must try to assemble pieces of a reluctant Isadora's story, which starts in the Cold War era with a group of college student spies known as the Oxford Six. Getting Isadora to come clean about the past might keep the three of them safe from a potential attack themselves--if only Isadora would oblige. Dalton's warmth may mislead readers into thinking people who are attacked always recover (they don't). But even if her single-story risks sometimes falter, her long-term-plot risks pay off.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2016
This is much more than its billing as an Oxford Dogwalkers mystery. When Oxford Professor James Lowell is found brutally bludgeoned to death, Anna Hopkins, who works in the same college as Lowell, is horrified. She barely knew the man, but his death brings back terrible memories of the murder of her entire family years earlier. Then Anna discovers a shocking link between her friend Isadora and Professor Lowell; the two were part of a secret group of students recruited in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, by the mysterious Tallis to help spy on Oxford students who might be guilty of sympathizing with Russia. Then Isadora is brutally attacked, and Anna is sure there must be a connection to the attack on Lowell. Anna, Isadora, and their fellow dog-walking detective, Tansy, decide to investigate. What they find is a twisted, sad tale full of shocking revelations that have impacted lives from the sixties until now. This taut, suspense-filled, nail-biter of a mystery is chock-full of surprises and will appeal to a wide range of mystery lovers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)