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5.0 out of 5 stars
another brilliant installment in a really splendid series, August 1, 2002
This review is from: The Red Herring (Chief Inspector Woodend Mysteries) (Hardcover)
It's 1962 -- the United States of America and the Soviet Union are flexing their respective muscles regarding the missiles in Cuba, as the entire world holds its collective breath, waiting for World War III to break. But in the small town of Whitebridge, the villagers are soon caught up in another game -- that of the murder of a young school mistress, and the kidnapping of a young girl...
When the body of Verity Beale (a school mistress at the extremely exclusive King Edward VI Grammar School) is found in a pigsty (the back of her head bashed in) DCI Charlie Woodend and his sidekicks DI Rutter and DS Monika Paniatowski are called in to investigate. But almost from the first something about the very personal manner in which Verity Beale's body was disposed of, coupled with the strange manner in which news of her death affects the people who knew her in Whitebridge, warns Woodend that something out of the ordinary is up. For a school teacher at a very posh school which guards it's reputation jealously, Verity seems to have had the reputation of a good-time girl. Certainly her colleagues seem to have had a not too high opinion of her. Trying to form an idea of what kind of person Verity was, Woodend institutes a search into her background, but comes up with very vague and unsatisfactory answers. It's almost as if Verity Beale didn't exist before she came to Whitebridge! However, before Woodend and company have even started their investigations properly, one of the pupils at the grammar school, Helen Dunn, goes missing. Fearing that she may have been kidnapped by a pedophile, Woodend is ordered to abandon his investigation into Verity's murder in favour of trying to rescue Helen before it's too late. With the memory of another case in which he failed to rescue a kidnapped girl, Woodend is nothing loath to take on the kidnapping case. But it isn't too long before our canny detective is wondering if the two cases are connected in some way. Was Helen kidnapped because she knew something about Verity's murder? Or was Verity murdered because she had stumbled onto a plot to kidnap Helen? With the life of a young girl in the balance, Woodend puts his career on the line one more time, esp when it becomes clear to him that someone with a lot of power is muddying the waters and blocking both investigations...
I think that Sally Spencer's DCI Woodend seires is probably the best in police procedural books around. Not only is each mystery novel steeped in the feel and culture of the period, but each book has been a page turner. Cleverly paced, and with really interesting and gripping plots, each novel has been a gem to read. And a personal plus for me, each novel has (so far) not become terribly entwined with the personal lives of the police officers featured. Nothing against getting to know more about the detectives and their personal lives, but of late I've come away with the feeling that (sometimes) the personal aspect has more or less kidnapped the mystery plot so that you're not always reading a murder mystery that is really stellar.
On the other hand, "The Red Herring" was a brilliant read that will keep you guessing for quite a while. Some aspects of the mystery at hand was (I'll admit) easy to guess, but denouncement of the chilling whole, quite took my breath away. Why this authour is not winning award after award for sheer and consistent brilliance, is a mystery to me.
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