Ransom for Our Sins: A Jeremy Ransom/Emily Charters Mystery (Ransom/Charters Series)

Jeremy Ransom of the Chicago Police Department teams up once again with his surrogate grandmother, Emily Charters, to investigate a case of deception, obsession, and murder in a mysterious, cult-like community. By the author of Presence of Mind.

Once again, the strong relationship between the rootless Chicago detective Jeremy Ransom and the caring and wise Emily Charters adds bounce to Hunter's procedural pace. The duo's third outing (following Ransom for an Angel) finds Ransom tracking the identity of a young man who has been crucified. As Ransom searches for the killers, the elderly Charters, his surrogate grandmother and sleuthing sounding board, is in the hospital recovering from bypass surgery. Ransom's investigation leads him to the small, tight-knit religious group to which the victim belonged, but the Community of the Lord's leader, Rev. Samuel Draper, is forbidding, righteous and resolutely unhelpful. He also seems unmoved and unsurprised by the victim's death. Most of the other members are unwilling to talk openly about the victim or the church, and the one who does soon becomes another victim. On his frequent trips to the hospital to see Charters, Ransom provides her with the encouragement she needs to recover from her surgery; at the same time, she offers him the insight he requires to see through the screen of prevarication and denial thrown up by the suspects. Probably only a few Chicago policemen count Dickens as their favorite author, and fewer still are likely to have friends as versed in Shakespeare as Charters. But Ransom and Charters make a formidable and enjoyable detecting team whose partnership has developed into one as genuine as any in crime fiction.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In a third outing, Chicago police Detective Jeremy Ransom (Ransom for an Angel, 1995, etc.) and partner Gerald White are assigned to a particularly nasty killing. Nails have been hammered into the hands and feet of a teenaged boy, his head bashed in, and his naked body dumped into the trash. The victim is identified as Danny Lyman, member of an offbeat religious group called the Community; its leader is the ever-smiling but autocratic Reverend Samuel Draper. As the cops interview the minister and others in the Community, they find that Danny was too independent-minded for a church that demands utter obedience. (The church dictates every element of life; members are allowed to marry only other adherents of the faith.) When Danny's roommate Michael Franklin is similarly tortured, murdered, and his nude body dumped into trash behind a gay bar, Ransom and White grill the Reverend and his devoted associate Saul Berne--a man known to be quick to anger when anyone dares to question Rev. Sam's authority. Meanwhile, Ransom visits his sometime sidekick, the grandmotherly Emily Charters, now ailing in the hospital, and the two talk about life, literature, and, occasionally, the case. A plot that would seem thin in a novella is interminable in a full-length mystery. Here, the action appears to be taking place not in a big American city but in the world of an old-fashioned British novel, with an unsurprising climax to boot. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

When the body of a young man is found nude and apparently crucified in a downtown Chicago alley, homicide detective Jeremy Ransom gets the case. Not that he needs it: his surrogate grandmother, Emily Charters, is slowly recuperating from open heart surgery, and Ransom, despite his cool exterior, has become dependent emotionally on the feisty old gal. She's also been an invaluable sounding board for him as he does his detecting, and this latest case proves no exception. The victim, Danny Lyman, was a member of a cultish church group known simply as the Community. Was Danny killed because he interfered in the marriage of fellow church members Michael and Pamela? Could Pamela have killed him? Were Danny and Michael lovers? Why are the church members so indifferent to Danny's death yet so unwilling to cooperate in its investigation? Ransom and Emily work it out together in this delightfully intellectual portrayal of murder, mayhem, and the dark recesses of the human heart. Wes Lukowsky