Customer Reviews

The Company She Kept

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"The Company She Kept" is another pleasant little English mystery from Eccles, who tends to write relatively short books with reasonably tight plots. In this book murder comes with a creepy old house containing scary Tunisian artifacts, an eccentric old lady archaeologist, and an odd set of hangers-on that at one time made up the archaeologist's social set. The hangers-on turn out to be the suspects in the current case, and Eccles does a good job of making them out-of-the-ordinary characters who fill out the story well. My only gripe with the book is that the plotting by the killer seems overly elaborate, and it is unlikely the killer could have actually brought about the complicated plan.

As for the regular cast, Mayo remains a strong character though not fully developed like lead detectives in the books of Ruth Rendell, Reginald Hill, or Caroline Graham. In "The Company She Kept" we see less of Detective-Sergeant Kite, which is too bad, and instead are introduced to and see a great deal of Abigail Moon, a new sergeant in the squad. In my opinion Moon is added to the Eccles' books simply because it has become important for a woman to be added to detective squads--all the mystery writers end up doing it! Moon offers no unique characteristics that make her a good addition as far as this book goes.

This was an enjoyable book for me, and I can recommend it to lovers of English mysteries.