A Private Inquiry [Hardcover]

Jessica Mann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2001

An anonymous telephone threat endangers more than the professional integrity of arbitrator Barbara Pomeroy in this tautly woven, intricately plotted mystery novel. It also imperils her young son, Toby—unless Barbara rules in the caller’s favor. Nor is Barbara comfortable with the situation at her St. Ives home, where her retired husband, Colin, and Toby have befriended a holiday lodger who goes by the fanciful name of Clarissa Trelawny. In Barbara’s frequent absences demanded by her job, the deceptively charming Clarissa has become a kind of surrogate mother to Toby. When Clarissa Trelawny’s body is found beaten brutally to death, even Barbara is doubting the certainty of her own innocence. Deftly interweaving the narrative strands of Barbara’s disturbing trials both in her career and at home into a fabric of suspense, Jessica Mann’s fifteenth novel explores its heroine’s growing apprehensions and very mixed emotions.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Blackmail, missing persons, murder and a child's death all intertwine in a tantalizing if uneven tale preoccupied with the psychological underpinnings of its female characters. A seemingly benign planning commission hearing at Dorset introduces sexual adventurer Neville Cox, an entrepreneur appealing a refusal to permit construction of a children's nursery; Barbara Pomeroy, the planning inspector charged with determining the case; and Dr. Fidelis Berlin, a childless child psychologist testifying on behalf of the appellant. When an anonymous telephone call warns Pomeroy that her 11-year-old son, Toby, will be killed unless she rules in Cox's favor, the inspector's confidence in her ability to juggle peripatetic employment and motherhood is precariously eroded. The eerily inviting presence of "Aunt" Clarissa, Toby's newly acquired friend, confers a whiff of intrigue, while Sophie, the overeager psychology student who latches onto Dr. Berlin with uncanny sensitivity, is menacing in her obsequiousness. Too bad that Mann does not deliver fully on her promise of compelling female characters: These women are emotionally enfeebled, downright vicious or weighted-down by their pathetic ruses. The warmth and curiosity one might feel toward them is compromised by patches of clumsy dialogue and interior reverie ("she was only just forty, too young to welcome release from the bondage of physical desire"), as well as simplistic formulations of motive.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

While British planning inspector Barbara Pomeroy travels the countryside presiding over hearings, her much older artist husband stays in Cornwall with their young son, a kidney-transplant survivor. Unfortunately, an attractive but mysterious woman attaches herself to husband and son. Attempted coercion in one of Barbara's inquiries coincides with the violent murder of this woman, who may be the long-missing wife of a philandering entrepreneur who appeared before Barbara in a previous planning inquiry. Complex psychological characterizations (including that of a prominent child psychologist), attendant tensions, and a nicely convoluted plot round out the whole. [First published in Britain, this novel was shortlisted for the Gold Dagger award.DEd.]
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; First Edition edition (March 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786708263
• ISBN-13: 978-0786708260
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,457,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Self-Knowledge by the Sea, December 31, 2000

By 

R. Hughes (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Private Inquiry (Hardcover)

"A Private Inquiry," set mainly in St. Ives, in Cornwall, is both an engrossing mystery and a compassionate exploration of self-deception and ultimate awareness. It is a story of two women, whose lives intersect through the machinations of a third. At first, the book seems merely to be about the increasingly troubled circumstances of 40-ish Barbara Pomeroy, a planning inspector, whose life with her much older husband, Colin -- a retired banker and now an amateur artist -- and their son, Toby, the recipient of a kidney and now a healthy, growing boy, has become fraught with growing despair and romantic distress. Barbara is put off by the appearance of a woman, Clarissa Trelawny, who has taken a nearby home and befriended her husband and son, while Barbara herself is away from home, at various planning meetings around the country, feeling increasingly isolated from the affections of her family. Meanwhile, a noted psychiatrist, Fidelis Berlin, 60 years old, comfortable in her prominence but achingly lonely without fully recognizing it, is dispatched to find the missing wife of a business associate, Neville, who is now a fond acquaintance and former lover. The lives of Fidelis and Barbara intersect, following the ghastly murder of Clarissa, when Barbara is thrown under suspicion. Throughout this involving tale, author Jessica Mann leads us, in her cool and considered prose, into the minds of a women who have shaped their lives so very differently: Barbara, who has made herself into a steely professional, self-absorbed but somehow dispassionate and longing for physical affection; Fidelis, clinical and observant, but blind to the nuance of feeling and emotional resonance; and Clarissa, whom no one really knows, and everyone has underestimated. How these two women come to regard the outcome of the turmoil their lives are thrown into, and whether they manage to grow, is part of this book's allure. Ms. Mann sketches the personal history of her conflicted characters with great assurance, a deft awareness of how we are shaped by the losses of our youth, and how a struggle for personal advancement is so often really a yearning for love. Atmospheric and absorbing, "A Private Inquiry" is a thought-provoking novel, more about self-discovery than whodunit, but at the same time a fully realized mystery, ultimately satisfying, poignant and memorable. Highly recommended.

5.0 out of 5 stars An enthralling thriller, June 5, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: A Private Inquiry (Hardcover)

This is one of the most gripping, neat crime novels I've ever read and I loved its setting in the most evocative part of cornwall too. brilliant.