An Accidental Shroud [Paperback]

Marjorie Eccles (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (1997)
• ASIN: B000OTAWS2
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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4.0 out of 5 stars A nice little mystery from Eccles, November 3, 2011

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Booker G "ultimate reader" - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Accidental Shroud (Hardcover)

"An Accidental Shroud" is another mostly satisfying installment in Eccles's Inspector Mayo series. Eccles's plot is about murder involving a complex family situation in which parentage surprises abound. Eccles keeps the reader interested with the interrelated suspects, each with his or her own personal dilemmas, and with a variety of leads in the case. There is so much activity in terms of leads and characters that the story feels a bit scattered, but mostly it is engrossing.

Regarding the detective protagonists, in this book Eccles puts Chief Inspector Gil Mayo on the back burner a bit so as to feature Inspector Abigail Moon, the recently promoted female in the detective squad. Moon seems like the token female addition to the series. A 20-year veteran sergeant is assigned to Moon, and this Sergeant Carmody, reliable and unflappable with a grounded wisdom, seems more the detective than Moon. Sgt. Kite is missing completely from this book, which is a mistake on the author's part. In any event, Eccles just doesn't develop her detective staff as complex characters in the way that some major mystery writers do (Ruth Rendell, Elizabeth George, Reginald Hill), and the reader just has to live with it.