As Poppy Tasker sits at a play center with her grandson and listens to the idle chatter of the young nannies around her, she dreams about more exciting ways to spend the rest of her life, and her dreams are soon grotesquely realized. 15,000 first printing.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Like music lovers listening to a favorite piece conducted by a master, mystery fans will relish Dickinson's ( Skin Deep ) complicated puzzler with its beautifully realized cast. Poppy Tasker, a game and warm-hearted 50-year-old divorcee searching for a life on her own, agrees to baby-sit for her toddler grandson Toby while her Labour Party daughter-in-law pursues a seat in Parliament from their London district. A young man observed watching Toby's play group in the park angers Poppy and the nannies; he is also seen outside Poppy's house the night she comes home with one of the other tots' fathers--a Romanian national whom she met at a concert. When the young man is found murdered in the play center, the nannies come under suspicion, much to Poppy's resentment; meanwhile, as the revolution in Romania looms, she wonders about the involvement of her friend there and in developments closer to home, which come to include the killing of one of the nannies. In the process of untangling a knot of credible coincidence and complex motivation, she also finds fresh direction and a new companion. Mystery Guild alternate.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 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.
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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,
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,
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.
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