Play Dead [Hardcover]

Peter Dickinson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1993

While looking after her grandson at a London play center, Poppy Tasker is disturbed by the arrival of a mysterious who seems intensely interested in her young grandson, and her life is further thrown into turmoil by the discovery of a corpse near the playground. Reprint. K.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The complicated puzzler Play Dead 's beautifully realized cast features English divorcee Poppy Tasker, drawn into international intrigue while baby-sitting her grandchild; also in March, Mysterious will re-release Dickinson's King & Joker , a mystery set in Buckingham Palace.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Fifty-ish Poppy Trasker, unhappily divorced and marking time by minding her grandson Toby for her politically-minded daughter-in-law Janet, is asked to identify a dead man found in Toby's play center. To Poppy's alarm, it's the man who had been watching her house and following her and Toby. What connection can the unknown corpse (a child molester?) have to the death of one of the play-group nannies-- or to Poppy's unlikely liaison with John Capstone, husband of Janet's Thatcheresque opponent...or to an international drug-smuggling plot, a cozily aristocratic family, or the impending fall of the Romanian government? In the hands of anybody less than veteran Dickinson, the preposterous reach of this intricate plot would boggle the mind; here, the links between the homely details of Toby's tantrums and the fate of the Ceausescus seem beautifully inevitable. Dickinson's touch is so masterly here that he makes other fine domestic mysteries seem quite amateurish. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Warner Books Inc (Mm) (March 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446401129
• ISBN-13: 978-0446401128
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,207,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A smart, "not too scary," beautiful murder mystery to grow with, November 19, 2008

By 

S. L. Hill-Tanquist (U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Play Dead (Hardcover)

Peter Dickinson's Play Dead is a beautiful book. It is not meant to be funny or frightening, but to draw our attention to life: children, music, relationships, love. In her attempts to understand a murder, Poppy Tasker confronts the choices that have led her to become small-of-spirit. As she comes to understand the forces that led to the murder (as well as the unintended consequences of wrong conclusions about them), she learns what is important to her and becomes "She-who-knows-what-she-wants."

5.0 out of 5 stars Great mystery, great about relationships, April 25, 2010

By 

Lazy reviewer (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Play Dead (Hardcover)

Peter Dickinson is one of my favorite mystery authors, and this may be his best book, less because of the mystery than because of the multidimensional, reflective protagonist, a leftish grandmother caring for her grandson while seeking a richer life. The mysterious deaths are nevertheless puzzling [and weird, as usual in Dickinson] and clues for their solution emerge in surprising ways. Admittedly, the web of relationships is a little far-fetched, but their variety lets him comment strikingly on British sociopolitical life in the early 1990s. All of his books might be called social science fiction: he creates very original contexts and then lets the interaction reveal implications as it works itself out. This book is unusually intricately developed; it's a very good read, sometimes suspenseful but more often gripping due to its intriguing creativity. It's a shame this book isn't more available and more frequently reviewed here.