The Devil’s Wind is Steve Goble’s entertaining second historical mystery featuring Spider John Rush. Spider John, along with his friends Hob and Odin, is trying to escape the pirate life and Port Royal, Jamaica, where many of his pirate friends are being led to the gallows. Spider John finds berth as the carpenter on the ship Redemption, sailing for Boston toward Spider’s wife and young son and away from the Caribbean’s perilous outlaw waters.
Aboard Redemption, Spider’s friend Odin—a grizzled, humorous, and ugly one-eyed sailor—spots Sam Smoke as a paying passenger. Smoke, a nefarious pirate who takes pleasure in killing, is a sailing mate of the notorious Ned Low, who is more diabolical than even Blackbeard. Smoke’s presence unnerves Spider, and when Redemption’s captain is found shot dead inside his locked cabin, Spider takes it upon himself to determine if the captain’s death is suicide or murder.
The Devil’s Wind is an outstanding locked-room mystery combining whodunit and action into a marvelous adventure mystery. Its cast of exotic characters are rendered with precision and detail. The dialogue matches the characters and the story perfectly. There are several instances where Spider’s cursing resembles high art, requiring a second and third reading to admire clever vulgarity. The plotting is devilishly tight, Spider is intelligent and tough, and, for this reader, the culprit was hidden until the final pages.