Customer Reviews

A Death of Distinction

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I think this book is one of the best of the Gil Mayo series. "A Death of Distinction" is the 8th installment, and Eccles really gets all important aspects of this example of the English mystery genre just about perfect. The plot involving the murder of a well-respected governor of a youth prison in Lavenstock is engrossing and well developed. The suspects and other locals related to the plot are once again unique representations of the human race, are well drawn with their egoisms and problems. Even though one may suspect early who the murderer is, wanting to know the reason for the crimes will keep the reader absorbed.

Eccles is a good writer--the dialogue is believable and her prose is smooth. She really enjoys describing flowers and shrubbery in her books, sometimes overdoing it. In this book she allows herself the luxury of making one of her characters a gardener, but thankfully she keeps her descriptive passion in check.

My one complaint about Eccles's series is that the series characters are flat. Her efforts to make Mayo and company complex characters involves telling the reader what they are like rather than showing who they are. While Gil Mayo is more developed than the other characters, the worst is Inspector Abigail Moon who is supposed to be the ambitious young woman detective, and yet she is rather bland and is never shown doing anything spectacular to justify her quick rise in the department. Eccles seems so much better in developing the plot-related characters.

In spite of his positive reputation, Jack Lilburne, Governor of Conyhall Youth Offenders' Institution dies in a car bomb. Detective Superintendent Gil Mayo and Inspector Abigail Moon begin to investigate the incident. They initially concentrate on prison inmates, past and present. However, when a second killing occurs, the law enforcement duo knows that they must widen their list of suspects.

Specifically, Gil and Abigail turn towards hospital worker Marc Daventry as the prime suspect. Marc seems obsessed with Lilburne's daughter Flora, who is recovering from the bomb blast that killed her father at the hospital where the orderly works. However, both Gil and Abigail realize that they need to uncover the killer very soon because a third victim is most likely.

A DEATH OF DISTINCTION, the eighth Mayo novel, is a well-written who-done-it that it's not quite as distinctive as normally expected for this usually high quality series. Though the story line moves forward at a reasonable pace, there is a dearth of reasonable suspects. Still, fans of the series and those who enjoy the British police procedural will like this novel.

Harriet Klausner