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Owen Parry a master of Civil War whodunits

A Union general has been murdered and hideously mutilated. Abel Jones must solve the mystery. Owen Parry a master of Civil War whodunits

Date published: 9/20/2003

BOLD SONS OF ERIN, by Owen Parry. William Morrow. 352 pages. $24.95.

THE CHARGE OF THE Irish Brigade at Fredericksburg caps an astonishing novel that opens at night in a remote Pennsylvania graveyard, where a Welsh major and two Pennsylvania Dutch soldiers are unearthing a surprise in a rotted coffin, as a mob of surly, hate-filled miners, every one an angry Hibernian, moves menacingly close.

Those who have read Owen Parry's previous four Civil War whodunits will expect fine writing, accurate history and wild turns in the plot--and they will not be disappointed in "Bold Sons of Erin," the latest in the Abel Jones series, released this month.

A Union general has been murdered and hideously mutilated, certainly the victim of Fenians. Or was it the Russian secret police? Or the Confederates? Or perhaps a coal millionaire, fat with wartime profits? The much-wounded Maj. Jones, his nights tormented by dreams erupting from his long service against the wild Pushtoons along the Afghanistan border, is equally troubled in his waking hours by woman problems.

Is his darling wife, for whom he waited so long, infected with early women's liberation ideas? Will the madam of the town's swankiest whorehouse insist on his help? (After all, he is a rigid chapel Methodist.) And what of the German leper woman, madder than six Charles Mansons, and what of her sable-haired familiar, an Irish beauty who melts men's hearts? And minds. And his Teutonic Marxist landlady. And which of these remarkable Valkyries threw the deadly bomb? And were the German revolutionaries of Missouri behind it?

Maj. Jones has decided opinions on Gens. George McClellan and Ambrose Burnside, and they reflect the author's keen grasp of Civil War fact. They are not the only big names who parade through this book, creating new problems for Jones. Secretary of State William Seward; Abraham Lincoln's confidential secretary, John Nicolay; Lincoln himself; and the keeper of the St. Elizabeth's madhouse all have a part to play. And the murdered general? He was not who he was thought to be, not once, but twice.

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Date published: 9/20/2003