THE DEVIL’S WIND

Fiction

The smell of blood

THE DEVIL’S WIND

A Spider John Mystery

By Steve Goble

272 pp. Seventh Street Books

Reviewed by Eric Petersen

Steve Goble is back with the second entry in his new mystery series featuring a most unlikely and unforgettable sleuth – an 18^th-century pirate. The first book, The Bloody Black Flag, is also reviewed on this site.

Honorable pirate Spider John Rush, an illiterate yet skilled ship’s carpenter, got his nickname because he used to tease his sister by eating live spiders in front of her. He never intended to take up a life of piracy – it just worked out that way, allowing him to make some decent money for his wife Em and their son Little Johnny, whom he hasn’t seen in a long time.

Now in his late twenties, he wants out of the pirate life, especially after barely escaping being hanged by the Royal Navy in the fall of 1722. He’d been working on the ill-fated pirate ship Plymouth Dream when her captain went mad and started torturing and murdering the crew. Spider led a mutiny and killed him.

The Devil’s Wind opens in the Caribbean in early 1723, with Spider John Rush guzzling rum at a tavern in Jamaica. Still a wanted man and fearing the noose, he’s taken an assumed name – John Coombs, after Ezra Coombs, his best friend and pirate mentor, who was murdered aboard the Plymouth Dream, but not by the ship’s crazed captain – it was a baffling crime that Spider solved.

Done with the pirate life, he’s gotten himself and his two surviving friends from the Plymouth Dream – Scottish ex-pirate Odin and 15-year-old ship’s boy Hob – legitimate jobs aboard the ironically named merchant ship Redemption, which is about to depart soon. At the end of the voyage, Spider plans to take his pay and finally return home to his family in Nantucket.

The Redemption is commanded by the amiable and respected Captain Josiah Brentwood, whose grown daughter Abigail is one of the passengers. All goes well at first, but then Odin is spooked when a certain paid passenger comes aboard the ship. His name is Samuel Lawrence, but Odin recognizes him as a pirate called Sam Smoke.

Odin once served on a pirate crew along with Sam and one Ned Low. While most pirates are honorable men who don’t kill without reason, Sam and Ned lived to torture and murder innocent people just for the fun of it. They were, Odin tells Spider John, “fucking inhuman bastards” - inhuman enough to scare Odin, a tough man who had served on Blackbeard’s crew.

Ned Low, who was even more of a monster than Sam Smoke, became captain of his own ship, with Sam as his right-hand man. Now Sam is a mere paid passenger aboard the Redemption? To Odin, it’s a bad omen, because wherever Sam Smoke is, Ned Low isn’t far behind. Then something terrible happens.

While most of the crew and passengers are gathered on deck for the Sunday service, a gunshot rings out from the captain’s cabin. Captain Brentwood is discovered dead by an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, a suicide note nearby. Though the captain had been depressed following the recent death of his wife, his daughter Abigail doesn’t believe for a minute that he committed suicide.

Neither does Spider John Rush. When he examined the crime scene, Spider was overcome by the metallic smell of hot blood – but there was no smell of gunpowder. If the captain had shot himself inside his cabin, the smell of gunpowder would have been overwhelming.

Spider quickly uncovers the killer, a pint-sized crewman named Little Bob whom the captain had fired not long before his death. The little man with the ferocious temper had vowed revenge on the captain and sneaked back on the ship after being kicked off. But then Spider discovers proof that Little Bob couldn’t have killed the captain, and saves him from execution.

If Little Bob didn’t do it, then who killed Captain Brentwood and staged his murder to look like a suicide? Spider determines to solve the crime. Of course, Odin suspects Sam Smoke, but staging the scene of a killing isn’t Sam’s style – and he’s not the only pirate on board pretending to be a paid passenger.

Solving this baffling crime will have to wait, because the Redemption is sailing on the Devil’s wind, right into a deadly ambush…

Combining swashbuckling pirate adventure with hardboiled detective noir, The Devil’s Wind is another worthy entry in an exciting new mystery series featuring an unusual and memorable sleuth. Author Steve Goble’s meticulous attention to period detail and dialogue makes it work. Highly recommended!

Eric Petersen is an administrator and blogmaster for the Internet Writing Workshop, an international, online writer’s group run out of Penn State University. You can reach him by e-mail at EricPetersen1970@hotmail.com