The Red Hand of Fury by R. N. Morris. On the eve of WWI a young man strips naked and enters the polar bear exhibit at the London Zoo with deadly results. When similar escapades take place around the city, Detective Inspector Silas Quinn and his two loyal sergeants, bored from monitoring Irish radicals, decide to investigate and discover that the case is much more personal for Quinn than expected and forces him to reexamine the darkest days of his past.
I’ve been reading Morris’ mysteries for almost fifteen years now, beginning with his Porfiry Petrovich series set in 1860s St. Petersburg. He does a consistently fine job with historical atmosphere and character development, though his plot resolutions are not as consistent. This is the fourth volume in the Silas Quinn series and it’s definitely the best one so far and does not require readers to have knowledge from the previous three to enjoy. What makes this story special is the quality of the forces of evil arrayed against our heroes. The manipulation and duplicity involved keeps the suspense level high and the full extent of the situation hidden even as the number of remaining pages dwindles to a very few.
For all my previous “books of the year” lists, see my dedicated page for these titles.
The unset alarm clock 
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