Series Spotlight: Matthew Corbett Colonial Whodunits

The sixth volume in the bestselling Matthew Corbett murder mysteries is finally available, so fans of historical fiction or mysteries who have yet to discover this excellent series: it’s a great time to dig in! Set in Colonial North America and Europe of the 1700’s, the series features a young magistrate’s clerk with a sharp mind and unshakeable sense of justice.

Speaks the Nightbird: A Novel – Matthew Corbett Book 1 (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $9.99)

The Carolinas, 1699: The citizens of Fount Royal believe a witch has cursed their town with inexplicable tragedies – and they demand that beautiful widow Rachel Howarth be tried and executed for witchcraft. Presiding over the trial is traveling magistrate Issac Woodward, aided by his astute young clerk, Matthew Corbett. Believing in Rachel’s innocence, Matthew will soon confront the true evil at work in Fount Royal….

Evil Unveiled

After hearing damning testimony, magistrate Woodward sentences the accused witch to death by burning. Desperate to exonerate the woman he has come to love, Matthew begins his own investigation among the townspeople.

Piecing together the truth, he has no choice but to vanquish a force more malevolent than witchcraft in order to save his beloved Rachel – and free Fount Royal from the menace claiming innocent lives.

 

Queen of Bedlam – A Matthew Corbett Novel, Book 2 (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $13.99)

His epic masterwork Speaks the Nightbird, a tour de force of witch hunt terror in a colonial town, was hailed by Sandra Brown as “deeply satisfying…told with matchless insight into the human soul.” Now, Robert McCammon brings the hero of that spellbinding novel, Matthew Corbett, to eighteenth-century New York, where a killer wields a bloody and terrifying power over a bustling city carving out its identity — and over Matthew’s own uncertain destiny.

The unsolved murder of a respected doctor has sent ripples of fear throughout a city teeming with life, noise, and commerce. Who snuffed out the good man’s life with the slash of a blade on a midnight street? The local printmaster has labeled the fiend “the Masker,” adding fuel to a volatile mystery…while young law clerk Matthew Corbett has other obsessions in mind. Earnest and hardworking, Matthew spends his precious spare time attempting to vindicate the abuses he witnessed growing up in the Sainted John Home for Boys, at the hands of its monstrous headmaster. But Matthew’s true calling lies not in avenging the past but salvaging the future — for when the Masker claims a new victim, Matthew Saulis lured into a maze of forensic clues and heart-pounding investigation that will both test his natural penchant for detection and inflame his hunger for justice.

In the strangest twist of all, the key to unmasking the Masker may await in an asylum where the Queen of Bedlam reigns — and only a man of Matthew’s reason and empathy can unlock her secrets. From the seaport to Wall Street, from society mansions to gutters glimmering with blood spilled by a deviant, Matthew’s quest will tauntingly reveal the answers he seeks — and the chilling truths he cannot escape.

 

Mister Slaughter – Matthew Corbett Book 3 (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $6.99)

The world of Colonial America comes vibrantly to life in this masterful new historical thriller by Robert McCammon. The latest entry in the popular Matthew Corbett series, which began with Speaks the Nightbird and continued in The Queen of Bedlam, Mister Slaughter opens in the emerging metropolis of New York City in 1702, and proceeds to take both Matthew and the reader on an unforgettable journey of horror, violence, and personal discovery.

The journey begins when Matthew, now an apprentice “problem solver” for the London-based Herrald Agency, accepts an unusual and hazardous commission. Together with his colleague, Hudson Greathouse, he agrees to escort the notorious mass murderer Tyranthus Slaughter from an asylum outside Philadelphia to the docks of New York. Along the way, Slaughter makes his captors a surprising–and extremely tempting–offer. Their response to this offer will alter the course of the novel, setting in motion a series of astonishing, ultimately catastrophic events.

Mister Slaughter is at once a classic portrait of an archetypal serial killer and an exquisitely detailed account of a fledgling nation still in the process of inventing itself. Suspenseful, illuminating, never less than compulsively readable, it is, by any measure, an extraordinary achievement, the largest accomplishment to date from one of our most gifted–and necessary–writers.

 

The Providence Rider – Matthew Corbett Book 4 (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $6.99)

The Providence Rider is the fourth standalone installment in the extraordinary series of historical thrillers featuring Matthew Corbett, professional problem solver. The narrative begins in the winter of 1703, with Matthew still haunted by his lethal encounter with notorious mass murderer Tyranthus Slaughter. When an unexplained series of explosions rocks his Manhattan neighborhood, Matthew finds himself forced to confront a new and unexpected problem. Someone is trying—and trying very hard—to get his attention. That someone is a shadowy figure from out of Matthew’s past: the elusive Professor Fell. The professor, it turns out, has a problem of his own, one that requires the exclusive services of Matthew Corbett.

The ensuing narrative moves swiftly and gracefully from the emerging metropolis of New York City to Pendulum Island in the remote Bermudas. In the course of his journey, Matthew encounters a truly Dickensian assortment of memorable, often grotesque, antagonists. These include Sirki, the giant, deceptively soft-spoken East Indian killer, Dr. Jonathan Gentry, an expert in exotic potions with a substance abuse problem of his own, the beautiful but murderous Aria Chillany, and, of course, the master manipulator and “Emperor of Crime” on two continents, Professor Fell himself. The result is both an exquisitely constructed novel of suspense and a meticulous recreation of a bygone era.

 

The River of Souls – Matthew Corbett Book 5 (4/5 stars, currently priced at $9.99, add Audible narration for $9.99)

The year is 1703. The place: the Carolina settlement of Charles Town. Matthew Corbett, professional ‘problem solver,’ has accepted a lucrative, if unusual, commission: escorting a beautiful woman to a fancy dress ball.

What should be a pleasant assignment takes a darker turn when Matthew becomes involved in a murder investigation. A sixteen-year-old girl has been stabbed to death on the grounds of a local plantation. The suspected killer is a slave who has escaped, with two family members, into the dubious protection of a nearby swamp. Troubled by certain discrepancies and determined to see some sort of justice done, Matthew joins the hunt for the runaway slaves. He embarks on a treacherous journey up the Solstice River, also known as the River of Souls. He discovers that something born of the swamp has joined the hunt…and is stalking the hunters with more than murder in mind.

What follows is a shattering ordeal encompassing snakes, alligators, exiled savages, mythical beasts, and ordinary human treachery. The journey up the River of Souls will test Matthew’s courage, commitment, and powers of endurance. It will also lead him to a confrontation with a figure from his recent past, which will alter Matthew’s life, setting the stage for the next installment in this compulsively readable series.

Gripping, unsettling, and richly atmospheric, The River of Souls is a masterful historical adventure and a major addition to Robert McCammon’s extraordinary body of work, featuring the continuing exploits of a young hero USA Today has called ‘the Early American James Bond.’

 

Freedom of the Mask – Matthew Corbett Book 6 (4/5 stars, currently priced at $9.99)

The year is 1703, and Matthew Corbett, professional “problem solver,” is missing. Last seen by his friends in New York before he departed on a lucrative, seemingly straightforward mission for the Herrald Agency in Charles Town, he’s been too long absent. His comrade-in-arms Hudson Greathouse has an increasing sense the young friend he thinks of as a son must have met with some unexpected peril. Following his hunch, Greathouse retraces Matthew’s steps only to find him first presumed dead, then accused of murdering a young woman and apparently en route to London with a devious Prussian count last encountered on Professor Fell’s Pendulum Island.

Little does he know that Matthews’s circumstances are growing worse by the second. For when Matthew arrives in the bustling squalor of Londontown, he’s come shackled, charged for the murder of Count Anton Mannerheim Dahlgren. No matter the lack of body, presumed lost to the ocean. He soon finds himself locked up in the infamous Newgate prison, and has drawn the interest of a mysterious mask-wearing vigilante accused of several gruesome murders. Greathouse and the woman Matthew loves, Berry Grigsby, travel across the high seas to England to aid their friend, but it is impossible to know whether they will reach him in time to save his life.

Freedom of the Mask is the sixth installment in bestselling author Robert McCammon’s acclaimed series of standalone historical thrillers featuring the exploits of a young hero the USA Character Approved Blog has called “the Early American James Bond.” The most surprising and ambitious volume to date, this is a novel filled with unpredictable twists and a note-perfect depiction of early 1700s London. Fans will not want to miss Matthew Corbett’s most dangerous adventure yet.

 

* * *

Tech Tip of the Week: Phone Battery Drains Overnight? An Easy Fix.

* * *

 

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • More Networks
Copy link
Powered by Social Snap