High Constable

Assisting New York's highest police official during the winter of 1808, middle-aged doctor Pieter Tonneman finds the roots of a gruesome murder in city government corruption, until his family becomes the focus of a killer's deadly attentions.

The third historical mystery, after The Kingsbridge Plot , in the saga of New York's Tonneman family is a meandering tale set in the early years of the 19th century. The pseudonymous husband-and-wife authors (Annette Meyers writes the Smith and Wetzon series; Martin Meyers, the Patrick Hardy stories) deliver period fare more successfully than plot. A "New-York" city official and a cashbox vanish; bodies are found, and suspects are trailed, questioned and occasionally beaten before the story is gorily resolved, almost by accident. Each chapter begins with a reproduction of an actual newspaper ad, and one scene cameos DeWitt Clinton, Washington Irving, Lorenzo da Ponte (Mozart's erstwhile librettist) and Clement Moore. Aaron Burr appears briefly. Gangs roam the poorer streets of the city, which, we're repeatedly told, ends at "Chambers-Street." While a killer seems to focus on the family of Peter Tonneman, nobody seems more nasty and brutish than real-life High Constable Jacob Hays, the city's top policeman, who, the authors note, is said to have invented the mode of questioning known as the third degree.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

It's only 33 years after the last episode in Meyers's Dutch- Jewish Tonneman family chronicles (The Kingsbridge Plot, 1993), and many of the dramatis personae from 1775 are still hanging around, or ready to leap out of unquiet graves. Shortly after John Tonneman's rebellious son Peter quarrels with Joseph Thaddeus Brown--his boss and John's partner in the Collect Project to provide the city of New-York with a freshwater pond--Brown disappears with $50,000 in Collect funds; the only thing that stops High Constable Jacob Hays from arresting Peter for Brown's murder is that Peter, running away from his authoritarian father's house, has stopped just long enough to rescue the Constable's cousin Charity Boenning from a fatal coach accident. It's old John himself, looking literally more deeply into Brown's shallow grave, who, with the help of his old friend Maurice (Jamie) Jamison, recognizes the snaggletoothed skull clasped to Brown's back as that of Emma Greenaway--murdered daughter of Jamie's wife, Grace--and realizes that Emma may not have been murdered by counterfeiting conspirator Thomas Hickey back in 1775 after all. Reads less like a historical detective story than an overstuffed period soap opera with homicides obbligato. Though veterans of The Kingsbridge Plot will find little enough mystery here, newcomers to the Tonneman saga may find this entry incomprehensible. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Third in the series based on the Tonneman family of early New York, this title pursues physician Pieter some years after the events of The Kingsbridge Plot (LJ 7/93). Now it is 1808 and the High Constable wants Pieter's help in determining who committed another gory murder.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The third sequel in the Meyers' historical mystery series is as well written, deftly plotted, and carefully researched as the duo's two previous stories about the Tonneman family of New York City. The intriguing characters, authentic dialogue, and nicely detailed descriptions of life in New York at the beginning of the nineteenth century are the strongest points about the book. John Tonneman, the physician who has been the central character in the series, is married, with an established medical practice. But his family life is unsettled, what with his wife's sudden and unexpected shrewishness and his son Peter's rebellious ways. What better distraction than a murder that needs to be solved? The body of a man found suffocated from being buried alive is scandalous enough, but when the skull of a young woman is found nearby, the high constable of New York knows he has a difficult case on his hands. He asks Tonneman to help solve the murder, which could have its roots in a years-old unsolved killing or in the corrupt politics of the day. An entertaining read that will delight history/mystery buffs. Emily Melton