Smoke: A Barrister Perris Novel

5 Star Review

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Editorial Book Review:

By Jessica Suarez

A. B. Michaels opens her second Barrister Perris novel with the Cliff House sliding into the Pacific Ocean in a wall of flame, and from that spectacular first image she never quite lets you settle. San Francisco in the autumn of 1907 is a city still finding its footing after the earthquake and fire of the year before, the economy quietly wobbling in ways that nobody wants to name out loud, and into this atmosphere of precarious reconstruction comes a suspected arson, a death that may or may not be suicide, and a law firm whose members are each carrying their own private weight into cases that refuse to stay separate for long.

That last element is what makes this series genuinely special. Michaels is not writing a procedural. She is writing about people, fully realized, warmly rendered people who happen to also solve crimes. Jonathan Perris with his quietly absolute moral code and his mysterious aversion to cigar smoke. Oliver Bean, eternally five minutes late and perpetually sighing his way into situations he vowed not to get involved in. Cordelia Hammersmith, seething beneath a professional composure that the men around her keep underestimating. Dove, a Lithuanian immigrant sniper turned investigator who approaches a weapons search the way other men approach a fine meal. This ensemble earns your affection chapter by chapter, and watching them navigate not just the mysteries but each other is one of the book's genuine pleasures.

The two cases, the Cliff House arson and the death of financier Wallace Portman, are cleverly structured to feel completely unrelated until the evidence starts suggesting otherwise. Michaels seeds both investigations with period-specific texture that feels genuinely lived in rather than researched: the union hall, the gun dealers of Chinatown, a corset designer with a room full of fabric mannequins, the trembling post-Knickerbocker economy. San Francisco in 1907 is not backdrop here. It breathes.

The prose has the confidence of a writer who knows her world and trusts her readers to keep up. Michaels holds master's degrees in history and broadcasting, and that dual background is felt in how precisely the era is rendered and how naturally the story moves. Nothing feels forced or explained for convenience.

For fans of intelligent historical mystery with characters worth genuinely caring about, this series keeps getting richer. Smoke is a more than worthy follow-up to The Twisted Road, and it leaves you wanting considerably more of Jonathan Perris and his remarkable firm.