Amendment of Life (A Detective Inspector Sloan mystery) [Unabridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Catherine Aird (Author), Bruce Montague (Author)

Book Description

Series: A Detective Inspector Sloan mystery | Publication Date: October 2002

Tidying up the famous yew tree hedge at Aumerle Court was never Pete Carter's favourite job. He liked it even less this Monday morning when he reached the exact centre of the maze - an allegory for death since the time of the Minotaur. He is supervised as ever by the redoubtable Miss Daphne, chatelaine of the Court, who is surveying the maze from an upstairs window. She, too, realises that death is in their midst...

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Last seen in Little Knell (2001), DI C.D. Sloan, "head of the tiny Criminal Investigation Department of `F' Division of the County of Calleshire Constabulary," looks into the murder of a woman found at the center of a Tudor-period maze. Catherine Aird's breezy Amendment of Life provides an intricate puzzle worthy of the always entertaining Inspector Sloan.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Aird's contemporary British cozies display excellent, engaging dialogue as well as plots handled with deft, no-nonsense trajectory. If Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan is less than a vivid presence, some of the other characters make up for it. In this one, it is the redoubtable Daphne Pedlinge. From her wheelchair on an upper floor of Aumerle Court, she keeps an eagle eye on the Tudor yew maze that folks pay to enter and wander in, and it is she who spots the body first. Meanwhile, David Collins, half of Double Felix, a lighting firm contracted to do sound and light for the maze as well as for the close of the bishop of Calleford, is supremely distracted by the illness of his small son. When the body in the maze turns out to be Mrs. Collins, Sloan works out a maze of his own through the charming bishop and his sensible wife, the sharp Miss Daphne, and the denizens of the Berebury Police Station. Nicely crafted and very winning. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Chivers Audio Books; Unabridged edition (October 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0754008924
• ISBN-13: 978-0754008927
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 4.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,342,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Murder in a maze!, March 21, 2004

By 

S. Schwartz "romonko" (alberta canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Amendment of Life: A Mystery (Hardcover)

Catherine Aird's longevity in the mystery writing genre is explained by this book. She's been writing her CD Sloan mysteries for years, and in this, her most recent addition to the series, she still has all her skills intact. She write mysteries that intelligent, erudite and slyly funny. In this one a body of a woman is found dead in front of a statue right smack in the middle of a maze. Sloan and Crosby first have to determine whether she died by her own hand or did someone else speed her to her death? Then they have to figure out how she could have been brought into the middle of this very difficult maze. And how do a dead rabbit and a missing goat from quite a few mile away tie in with their mystery? I am a huge fan of Catherine Aird, and this book is as elegant and mischievious as any of the the preceeding books in her Sloan/Crosby series.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another problems arises with DNA testing!, August 24, 2005

By 

K. L Sadler "Dr. Karen L. Sadler" (Freedom, Pa. USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Amendment of Life: A Mystery (Hardcover)

I thought this book was literally 'made or written for me' since I work in a bioethics/disability group that deals with some of the more recent moral conundrums brought to the fore by biomedical practitioners. Usually we have a problem in that families want to euthanize their family member with a disability. It never occurred to me that DNA testing could show that one parent is not actually the parent of a disabled child! And then to have invasive surgery to keep from passing on the defective gene to more posterity...I really think the woman should have mentioned this before the 'father' had the surgery. Would have avoided all kinds of trouble...

I was in London about 20 years ago, and though I saw one of their famous mazes I never got the opportunity to lose myself in one of them. I would have liked that as a child, though I imagine it can get a bit claustrophobic. Poor Inspector Sloan seems to have a knack for having to deal with bored elderly in Britain...their boredom is usually relieved by sticking their noses where into his murder cases. Though in this case the woman could hardly avoid getting involved since it was her maze the woman was killed in, and she had a bird's eye view of the maze from the second story of her home. She is actually quite witty, and keeps Sloan on his toes trying to figure out how to get through the maze, and how the body of the young woman got into the maze with no obvious tracks or means of doing so.

Sloan continues to have to deal with his rather dense Constable who has a penchant for speed. And in the midst of all this is a small boy suffering from a genetic disorder, who in the end is left bearing all the suffering that the selfishness of the adults around him left him with. A truly sad possibility to our endeavors to learn more about our existence and the sciences involved in making us who we are.

Karen Sadler