All Unwary (Thames Valley Mystery) [Hardcover]

Clare Curzon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1998 | Series: Thames Valley Mystery

Mike Yeadings and the Thames Valley Police receive a complicated dual assignment at what couldn't be a worse time. With his team reduced almost to a skeleton, Yeadings must figure out what happened to the missing daughter of a powerful Japanese business magnate and how her disappearance relates to the murder of her father's chief executive. He fears that xenophobia is at the heart of both crimes .

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This British police procedural by the author of Past Mischief (LJ 5/1/96) is sure to please. Mike Yeadings of the Thames Valley Police makes the most of a reduced force to locate the missing school-aged daughter of a wealthy Japanese toy manufacturer. A welcome series addition.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Less than 24 hours after she's disappeared from her boarding school, ruffling even the starchy headmistress, Dr. Walling, Mayumi Matsukawa walks into the home of her English mother Elizabeth. May was lonely, torn between her remote father, Kyoto industrialist Yasuhiko Matsukawa, and her unhappy mother, and she'd decided to come home to spend Easter with Elizabeth. Case closed, with thanks to Thames Valley Sgt. Rosemary Zyczynski and due note of the coldness of Hiromu Imura, the company director Matsukawa sent from Switzerland to take charge of May in his absence. But Zyczynski isn't done with the case; she's called back abruptly when Imura is found slashed to death in his hotel room--mistaken for Matsukawa, or killed on his own account?--and May has vanished again. (Elizabeth, who remains impervious to good fortune, is about to have a nasty accident on the road to the Matsukawa facility in Wrexham.) A flurry of clues leads to the studio of pansexual photographer Gregory Coulter, brother of May's study-mate Madeleine Coulter; to family intrigue in Wrexham; and ultimately to May's diagnosis of her anguish: ``I am in two pieces that don't fit.'' Conscientious, if sometimes muddled, plotting, with complications still arriving a few pages from the end. Middling for Curzon's long-running series (Close Quarters, 1997, etc.). -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (February 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312180373
• ISBN-13: 978-0312180379
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,590,920 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars keeps you guessing, May 3, 2000

By 

Lynn Everett - See all my reviews

This review is from: All Unwary (Thames Valley Mystery) (Hardcover)

This is the fourth book of Curzon'z that I read and one of the most satisfying. May starts out as a school runaway, supposedly because her parents marriage is in trouble, and then is kidnapped. Is her mother trying to kill her father? Is an enemy using May to get to her father? This book kept me on edge. I specially enjoyed the focus on Detective Seargant Z and her feelings about her troubled past.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Hard to follow., October 30, 2001

By 

"bibliofiend" - See all my reviews

This review is from: All Unwary (Thames Valley Mystery) (Hardcover)

This is the first book by Clare Curzon that I have read. It was okay, but I found it hard to follow. There were a lot of characters, and it took me about half way through the book until I was comfortable enough to know who they all were without having to stop and think. The storyline itself was somewhat unsatisfying. It seemed as though the police were running around hodge-podge questioning and requestioning people with no specific strategy or reasoning in mind. It was very confusing. It didn't have the organization that most police procedurals have.