Footsteps in the Fog (The Harding Hall Mysteries)

A MISFIRING TRIGGER WARNING: YOU'RE ABOUT TO READ FOOTSTEPS IN THE FOG. DON'T STOP NOW.

Muttonheads or not, in Dying Horribly at Harding Hall, Loris and Lars helped solve five of the eleven bizarre deaths that had taken place in their family over just a few decades. As Book 2, Footsteps in the Fog, opens, they learn, with mixed feelings, that those responsible for the solved murders have been hanged.

Now Lars is bored at Harding Hall. But if a plot that featured eleven murders (give or take an accidental death or two) can thicken, this one is about to.

Lars, it seems, now has the brawn, brains, and bravery (as well as the money) to do anything he wants, so he decides to open a detective agency in London with retired Inspector Fergus Kerr. Business is slow at first, but it picks up when the wife of a "well-connected" toff hires them to investigate whether her husband is cheating. He is, of course. Lars and Kerr bring the matter to an unconventional conclusion that leaves everybody happy (more or less). Almost overlooked in all the zany action, Loris somehow winds up with "the other woman" and they get married.

But events rush on. It's 1939, and England is at war. Lars has been pestering the War Office to volunteer his detective agency to help in the war effort, and getting no response. He suspects an admiral has something to do with this neglect (this admiral had been caught cheating by Lars's detective agency). Lars sends an anonymous letter to a very important person in the government, trying to expose the admiral's treachery, but the letter is easily traced back to him.

This letter changes everything. By pure coincidence, the rogue admiral is really a spy, and the War Office is impressed with Lars. Or maybe not so impressed-but they need a big, rich oaf for a vital intelligence effort, Operation Black Hat, with the goal of flushing out the Wolfsfrau, Germany's top spy in England.

Lars and Loris-like everyone else involved in this escapade, including the War Office itself-are no better at being spies than at being detectives. Somehow they proceed with the operation, avoiding one peril after another. Sometimes their success comes through blind luck, at other times through sudden strokes of genius, or insight, or even uncharacteristic common sense. The conclusion of the story is intriguing and dramatic.

Fast-paced and gripping on a purely narrative level, Footsteps in the Fog is laced with humor both wry and sly. It's got mystery, romance, and spy vs. spy intrigue, painted on a shape-shifting reality that is not unlike the actual world that we all stumble through. It's metaphysical slapstick. It's tragicomedy in a unique voice. And it's a damn good story.