The Orphanmaster is getting a starred review in Booklist, published by the American Library Association. Among the praiseworthy epithets: “compulsively readable”!
“In 1663, New Amsterdam colonists are plagued by a malevolent, cannibalistic spirit known as the witika (a version of the Algonquin wendigo); by difficult relations with the local Lenape tribes; and by the despotic cruelty of Director General “Peg Leg” Stuyvesant. Suspicions run rife as orphan children disappear, and when the orphanmaster, Aet Visser, comes under suspicion, his trader friend, Blandine van Couvering, reluctantly joins the handsome English spy, Edward Drummond, in finding the truth. Their mutual attraction is hardly surprising, but the grisly clues they uncover, and the depravity they expose, will shock even veteran readers of historical thrillers. A fascinating perspective on colonial politics and human behavior, this compulsively readable, heartbreaking and grisly mystery set in a wild, colonial America will appeal to fans of Robert McCammon’s fast-paced and tautly suspenseful Mister Slaughter (2010) and Eliot Pattison’s Bone Rattler (2007).”
— Jen Baker
Jean Zimmerman 