Customer Reviews

Behind You!

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It's the holiday season. Detective Inspector Paul Banham is still mourning the deaths of his wife and daughter, which makes for some problems with his assistant, Sergeant Alison Grainger. He likes her, she likes him, but between the job and his memories, he's not sure what they have can go anywhere. While none of that is central to the murder they are investigating, it does complicate an already messy situation.

The police have been called to a theater, where a Christmas pantomime is playing. Lucinda Benson is dead. Did she trip on stage during a scene that takes place in the dark, with ultra-violet fish, or did somebody hit her hard enough to kill her? The police won't know for sure until the lab tests come back, which will take a few days. In the meantime, the scene is being treated as a homicide.

The company is, as is not unusual in the theatre, full of egos, rivalries, and politics. The producer has ties to almost all the major players, who have ties with each other, who are related to each other. Following the money is just as convoluted an endeavor as trying to trace family trees; of course, not everything people say to Banham or Grainger is the truth, or the whole truth.

Looking at the cover of BEHIND YOU!, one might expect something very noir, very gritty; it's in shades of red, black, and grey. But it's cozier than the cover would lead one to believe, and still it's a good police procedural. Once Banham and Grainger unravel all the family ties, the killer is fairly obvious. But that unraveling is not easy, and leaves the two police officers lots of time to worry about each other and where they are headed.