Settling old scores

If not the best of the Barker and Llewelyn adventures by Will Thomas, Old Scores (2017) still moves along at a lively pace and maintains reader interest throughout.

It is 1891 and a Japanese delegation has arrived in London. It is mainly a shopping trip, the Japanese eager to purchase items, including a battleship, that will help them become an Asian power. One of their first sightseeing stops is the Japanese garden belonging to Cyrus Barker, the private enquiry agent who smokes a meerschaum pipe, has his own Doctor Watson in the form of the Welshman Thomas Llewelyn and considers the word detective to be a pejorative. Barker, it happens, once lived in Japan and had a Japanese wife, foreshadowing the "old scores" of the title.

The assassination of the Japanese ambassador leads to Barker being hired to find the killer, as well as to Barker being considered the main suspect. The ambassador's embarrassed bodyguards target Barker and Llewelyn, and there is much involving members of London's Chinese community, who despise the Japanese. This community includes Barker's former ward, Bok Fu Ying, now married to a man involved in prosperous but barely legal activities. What was she doing at the scene of the crime?

The resolution Thomas gives us seems complicated and confusing, and all questions are not satisfactorily answered. Even so, this is an excellent series of mysteries. Just choose another book to start with.