Partners in crime
Harriet Waugh
It is with considerable pleasure that I can announce that Ann Cleeves has at last, after a determined detour projecting a mildly unsatisfactory police inspector as the protagonist of her last few novels, returned to the curmudgeonly bird-spotter and solver of countryside mysteries, George Palmer-Jones, and his wife Molly. Since their last starring role they have retired and set themselves up as an investigative agen- cy. This seems to have subtly altered their relationship. Molly has developed a com- bative, competitive streak and is now even spikier than George.
In Another Man's Poison (Macmillan, £13.99) Molly's elderly aunt (a slightly batty widow living unhygienically high up on the fells) is murdered after she has embarrassed the local landowner and MP, Marcus Grenville, by accusing him of poi- soning protected birds. Grenville has hopes of becoming an environmental junior min- ister. When Molly and George start investi- gating they find a cauldron of steamy emotions surrounding the family that has been brewing for some time. Among the suspects are Marcus's keeper and his anx- ious wife, the under-keeper, his son's girl- friend, his daughter's husband and both his emotionally damaged children as well as his own lethally chilly, snobbish and reclu- sive wife. While George works on the poi- soned birds side of things, Molly concentrates on the diverse emotions that engage the characters. Molly solves the case. Excellent.
Ian Pears gets better and better and in his third novel, The Bemini Bust (Gollancz, f14.99), wears his learning lightly. Jonathan Argyll, an English art dealer living in Rome, is shaping up to be one of the more attractive amateur detectives. As in Anoth- er Man's Poison, however, it is his emotion- al partner, the beautiful but severely unscrupulous Flavia di Stephano of the art theft squad in Rome, who unravels the case. Jonathan is merely the unconscious victim of a number of murder attempts.
The story is set in Los Angeles where Jonathan has gone to deliver a mediocre Titian he has sold to a small private muse- um. While he is there, its millionaire owner is murdered and a newly purchased unknown Bernini bust, not yet unpacked, is nicked. Intrigue is rife. Shortly afterwards Jonathan appears to become unnaturally accident-prone. The novel is frothy and fun, and although I did guess who did it, nicely plotted.
Constable has been reprinting Elizabeth Ferrers' earlier works at quite a pace and while they are all enjoyable, now and then one is particularly good. Such is A Tale of Two Murders (£12.99). The central charac- ter, Hilda Gazeley, through whose eyes we experience a family drama leading to murder, is a nice, middle-aged woman, but she suffers from emotional blindness. She always rationalises uncomfortable behaviour in others until she has come to blank out the reality of what is going on around her. She has, for the past few years, lived with her widowed brother, bringing up his daughter Katherine. Now Katherine has become engaged to the son of estranged neighbours. Her brother has an awkward temper and things are, as she sees it, a bit strained. It is only when her brother is murdered that Hilda tries to pierce the fog in which she has been living. The quest for a murderer is also a quest for her own submerged identity. Altogether satisfacto- ry.
Sue Grafton's I is for Innocent (Macmil- lan, £14.99) is, as usual, a real pleasure. Her likeable West-coast female private eye, Kinsey Millhone, is hired by a lawyer to take over from a dead investigator a civil case brought by the ex-husband of a murdered heiress. The ex-husband believes that the acquitted, current but estranged one killed her. A lot of money is at stake. As Kinsey investigates the evidence against the estranged husband, it starts, embarrass- ingly, to fall to pieces. But if he did not do it, who did? There are, in fact, plenty of suspects and a lying witness. She then comes to suspect that the detective who had previously worked on the case had not, as supposed, died of a heart attack. The novel is nicely convoluted and absorbing, although there are a couple of glaring holes in the final explanation. Lizbie Brown's first detective novel, Broken Star (Constable, £12.99), gives promise of much future pleasure. It introduces Elizabeth Blair, a middle-aged American widow who owns a quilt shop in Bath, and her upstairs neighbour, a person- able young man called Max, who is a not particularly successful private eye.
Max is hired by Larry Aitken (a vain, television games-show host, living in the manor at South Harptree) to investigate who is sending him anonymous letters, and who poisoned his dog. Before Max has time to come to grips with the case, an iras- cible doctor takes a swig of Larry's whisky and drops dead. He had just been accusing Larry and the village church committee of embezzling the church funds. Larry does not drink alcohol, so the whisky was not meant for him. Max and Elizabeth need to decide who was the embezzler and why, what Larry's sex life (he is incapable of resisting any woman, even his hideous secretary) has to do with the case, what Larry's gentle, painting wife and daughter really feel about him, and what the brood- ing presence of the former owners of the manor living in the lodge portend. Then a second murder occurs. It is well-plotted and with a good twist at the end.
Jonathan Kellerman is an American writer who goes in for nice fat reads. In the Devil's Waltz (Little, Brown, £14.99) the grafting of two different stories sometimes shows. This is a pity because he is a good story-teller.
Alex Delaware, a psychologist who often seems to find that his cases involve crime- solving, is recalled to his run-down alma mater, the Western Pediatrics Hospital in Los Angeles, to help in a case of a little girl who suffers from mysterious life-threaten- ing illnesses whenever she is sent home to her loving and anxious parents. The child's specialist suspects Miinchausen Syndrome, a psychological illness usually found in mothers who, for obscure reasons, like to attract medical attention by half killing their children. The couple have already lost
one baby to sudden infant death syndrome. Now the specialist is frightened that the second child will die.
The case is further complicated because the grandfather of the child is the chairman of the hospital and appears to be disman- tling the establishment. As Delaware starts investigating the history of the family, another strand emerges to do with high finance and corruption in the hospital. This second plot works well until its lazily resolved ending undermines what has gone before. A pity.
1st Culprit is an unusually good annual of crime stories, edited by Liza Cody and Michael Z. Lewin (Chatto, £11.99), a diffi- cult thing to pull off, as too often too much plot is squeezed into too few pages. In con- sequence the stories can appear crude or clumsy. Here very few suffer these from failings. Even the detective stories work. The editors have chosen well, or, if com- missioned, the writers have pulled out all the stops.
Previous page
