Julia Spencer-Fleming is not an author that I had known prior to a blurb in the NY Times Book Review, so I gave her a look. When I finished her latest novel in the Fergusson/Van Alstyne mystery series, At Midnight Comes the Cry published in 2025, I found out this was at least her 11th book in the series. She published the first one, In the Bleak Midwinter, in 2002. The newest novel tells about the ongoing relationship between Clare Fergusson, an Episcopal priest and former US Army Blackhawk helicopter pilot, and former police chief Russ Van Alstyne in the fictional town of Millers Kill in upstate New York. I find it exciting to read a very good story and then learn that the author has a substantial body of work already published. Now I have a series of novels to look forward to, and I’ll get to enjoy the evolution of Ms. Spencer-Fleming’s protagonists. I’ve already downloaded In The Bleak Midwinter and plan to read it soon and then work my way through her novels in the order of publication.
This story began with Kevin Flynn, a young officer who chose to leave the Millers Kill PD to work in a bigger department at Syracuse. He was assigned to an undercover operation in which his task was to infiltrate a group of white supremists, but then he disappeared. His girlfriend and parents had not heard from him for months, he was fired from the Syracuse PD because the funds for his undercover job had been reallocated to other things, and he was a no-show for a new assignment.
Basically, this was a story about the white supremists, their plan to kill Jews, the misogyny of that movement, and the multicultural characters who were aligned to stop them. This was a very well-designed plot with fascinating characters. This mystery novel gets a 5/5 rating from me, and it left me excited to read more of this authors work.
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