From Publishers Weekly
Cleeves ( Murder in My Backyard ) allows her respect for the traditional mystery to fossilize her writing into a formula. The victim is the vicar's wife. The setting is a prototypical English town during a fair. The detective, Inspector Ramsay, is an unmarried and singularly brainy member of the constabulary ably assisted by a loyal sergeant who desperately desires action, not theories. Ramsay is as mundane and conventional as the trappings, as he tries to understand the victim while tracing her last hours of life. Meanwhile a succession of suspects is paraded for the reader's inspection, including the victim's stepson, his insecure girlfriend, a half-witted young man half in love with the victim, a dying widow, a social worker and an alcoholic ne'er-do-well. Unfortunately, none of them grabs our attention or loyalty, even after the half-wit is the victim of the inevitable second murder. The pace slowly picks up after that, and the concluding 20 or so pages are suspenseful and fast-paced, but they seem slim reward for readers who must slog through the first 190 pages of cliched two-dimensionality to get there.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Inside Flap
From the author of MURDER IN MY BACKYARD comes this mystery where a vicar's wife has done her last good deed...
Vicars' wives do not usually get themselves murdered....especially when they are as vibrant and caring as beautiful Dorothea Cassidy. But murdered she unquestionably was; and from the outset Inspector Stephen Ramsay is hard put to figure out why, let alone who. And though he did not know her in life, she charms him in her death.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
