Alan Jeffreys heads over to the American mid-West for an enjoyable underground murder romp in company with an appropriately named main character.
Crime fiction searches high and low for interesting murder locations, and Maidens of the Cave is no exception. After a suspicious death in an Indiana cave system, the FBI’s Illinois Forensics Branch in Chicago is called upon to investigate. The lab team, headed up by maverick investigator Christine Prusik, quickly establish that a young female student, found almost by accident in the cave, had indeed been murdered, using an exotic poison called Batrachotoxin, only sourced from a species of Dendrobatidae tropical frog, specifically Phyllobates terribilis.
The narrative races through various locations in Indiana and Illinois, centring on the Faculty of Medicine at Calhoun Seymour University, Indiana where the toxin was being researched for possible benefits for managing conditions such as Multiple Sclerosis and pain relief generally. Very large monetary research grants were involved. With her hands partially tied by FBI internal politics and bureaucracy, Prusik does her best to solve the ensuing string of killings, which usually feature the victim being located in a cave system. Despite her appropriate surname, Prusk only enters the caves reluctantly and purely to observe the crime scene.
Prusik’s visits – in jeans, rain jacket, and boots – seem typical of the way caving is often approached in the American mid-west. On one occasion, although the victim’s body was lowered down a shaft, the police enter upstream from a lower, horizontal entrance, and the protagonist, despite her antipathy for the underworld, is still impressed by the flowstone and cavern formation processes. Later in the story, she finds herself underground in a different cave system after an attack by the killer, left below a 15 metre pitch, restrained by duct tape which she saws against a stalagmite to free herself. After this, whilst fleeing from her assailant without a light, she enters an active streamway which – of course – entails two underwater dives before daylight is gained. This experience naturally leaves her numb and cold, and no more enamoured of caving than before!
The eternal conflict between office ‘procedure’ enthusiasts and actual work out on the street will strike a cord with many of us and, although the killing method baldly announces expertise that only a handful of suspects could use, the dénouement is still refreshingly startling. In his second novel, former senior law clerk Lloyd Devereux Richards handles the storylines well and Maidens of the Cave is very readable.
Reviewed by Alan Jeffreys
Maidens of the Cave
Published: 1 August 2023
Publisher: HQ
Paperback: £8.99
ISBN-10: 0008648344
ISBN-13: 978-0008648343
