Editorial review
Urquhart & MacDonald Murder Mysteries: Death and His Brother
By D.E. Ring
A holiday weekend, a runaway train, and a death that refuses to be an accident. Death and His Brother, the sixth installment in D.E. Ring’s charming historical mystery series, is a welcome return for longtime fans and a...
Reviewed by CANREADS
A holiday weekend, a runaway train, and a death that refuses to be an accident. Death and His Brother, the sixth installment in D.E. Ring’s charming historical mystery series, is a welcome return for longtime fans and an inviting entry point for newcomers. This latest installment sends another uncanny case speeding into the oncoming path of crime-fighting couple Urquhart and MacDonald.
It’s Dominion Day, 1951, and the opening night for the newly renovated Gramercy Hotel fast approaches. As does a runaway train, barrelling through its designated stops in the early hours of the morning toward the sleeping town of Barrachois—and the driver is out cold. In the aftermath of the diverted crash, a woman is found in her carriage with a broken neck. What starts off as simple tragedy soon spirals into conspiracy when an autopsy reveals the true time of death.
Against a backdrop of ostensibly cheerful holiday celebrations, Ring weaves a tale steeped in secrecy, malice, and murder. The train’s remaining passengers are at once survivors and suspects: a quartet of travelling jazz musicians hired as hotel entertainers, the girlfriend of the local police chief, the shifty talent agent Ricky Elia, and Elia’s enigmatic companion. Everyone is shaken. Everyone has something to hide.
Leading the investigation is stalwart Jimmy Urquhart, whose perseverance and emotional intelligence make him a strong detective and an even better friend, qualities tested as the novel unfolds. The case proves equally gripping for Sandy “Notepad” MacDonald, headstrong journalist and Jimmy’s wife—a conflict of interest that provides plenty of levity throughout. Recent initiation into motherhood is no obstacle to Sandy, who meets each twist with her trademark inquisitiveness and zeal. The sunny weekend is anything but restful as the pair are pulled deeper into the town’s criminal underbelly.
In this clever, soulful, character-driven mystery, readers are treated to a vibrant cast of suspects who move with mounting urgency through a sweltering day in mid-century Cape Breton. The standout is larger-than-life Connie Del Barba, aging hotelier of The Gramercy, whose modern outlook and razor-sharp wit make her the bright epicentre of a novel simmering with tension and dark, pulse-racing undercurrents.
Ring has a gift for atmosphere, especially as resentment and violence collide in the final stretch of the novel. Equal parts cinematic and intimate, Death and His Brother delivers a classic crime procedural anchored in deeply human stakes and threaded with sharp observations about grief, greed, and loyalty. Fans of Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None will find plenty to savour here: a contained setting, a tight suspect pool, and suspicion that escalates by the page. Look twice. Second-guess every assumption. In Barrachois, there are no guarantees, least of all life.
—CANREADS BOOK REVIEW