From Publishers Weekly
This wonderfully puzzling mystery performs an about-face deep into the story when, in a contrived and illogical internal monologue, the killer boasts about the crime. Until this disconcerting moment, the prolific author of the DCI David Webb series (A Shroud for Delilah, etc.) spins a finely detailed village procedural that deftly mixes some unhealthy family dynamics with slow and meticulous police work. Webb is on familiar ground: he is seeking four young thieves whose violence seems to be escalating. He works companionably with DCI Bennett, who in the course of the investigation confides that his home life is disintegrating because his new wife, the glacial and hostile Una, is alienating the grown children from his first marriage. When Bennett is found bludgeoned to death in his own parlor and Webb is asked to head the investigation, there is no lack of suspects, including: Bennett's son-in-law, furious because Bennett refused him a loan; the deceased's daughter's boyfriend, a felon in the making; and Bennett's wife, seemingly venal and uncaring. Webb has the continual, nagging conviction that he is overlooking something vital?and, of course, he is. Despite capturing a dysfunctional family at work and forming the beginnings of an intriguing investigation, Fraser lets too many coincidences and a melodramatic finale dilute the suspense.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Una Bennett, owner of a successful small business, has married widower Malcolm Bennett, highly respected Detective Chief in the Lethbridge police force and father to grown children Jane, Sally, and Timall three of whom had hoped he would marry tea cher Barbara Wood, spinster sister of their late, beloved mother Carol, and are not warmly disposed to Una. Meanwhile, Malcolm and his old friend and colleague DCI Dave Webb (The Seven Stars, 1997, etc.), whos stationed in nearby Shillingham, are trying t o deal with a series of shop robberies in the area. They have lunch together on Malcolms birthday, celebrated that night at a constrained dinner with Una and his family. Days later, Una finds Malcolm clubbed to death in his easy chair, the TV still on, tu ned to the big-game channel hed been watching, and a window pane broken in the back door. Within a week theres a second fatality in the family as Webb and his men try to sort out connections to the robberies, to Malcolms stolen ring, and to the unloving r elationship between Una and Malcolms family. An unfussy, straightforward narrative that manages to explore its emotional interactions with sensitivity and, despite an unsurprising finish, to maintain a nice level of suspense. --
Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
