Customer Reviews

Serpent Pool

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This is the first book I have read by this author, and it was good enough for me to seek out and buy others in the series. Recommended for those who enjoy well-crafted British "police-procedural" mysteries.

First be reassured. Despite the title, there are no snakes in this book, unless one includes Hannah Scarlett's lover the odious book dealer Marc Amos. (Was any Englishman ever really named "Marc Amos"? In this day and age perhaps.) I enjoyed the first in the series, The Coffin Trail, and felt that Hannah and Daniel Kind deserved each other and so skipped to the latest to find out if the sleazy Marc had finally been written out of the series. Unfortunately they are still together in this one, and Marc indulges in some very risky and risque behaviour, but to avoid any spoilers I'll not tell you if he meets the end he deserves. This one was not too hard to figure out because the villains are about the only characters left who haven't been murdered yet. And Edwards has too many characters who kill themselves by jumping off towers. But it's not a bad read and the Lake District settings are attractive.

This British crime novel is the fourth Hannah Scarlett and Daniel Kind story. The story begins when affluent George Saffell is trapped in a fire together with his beloved collection of books. A few weeks later, on New Year's Eve, DCI Hannah Scarlett and her partner Marc Amos meet Saffell's widow and many of the other people who are involved in this plot. The host is the ruthless lawyer Stuart Wagg, Louise Kind's latest conquest - or is it the other way round? Workwise, Hannah Scarlett is involved in the cold case of Bethany Friend, a young woman who drowned in the shallow Serpent Pool six years earlier in what may be suicide or murder. Soon Hannah begins to suspect there is a connection between her case and the new murder case.

As usual in the series, Daniel gets involved in the murders, partly because of his sister Louise's relationship with Stuart Wagg, partly because of his job. And as Hannah and Marc's private problems are escalating, it is very tempting for her to discuss the case with Daniel who is single again after Miranda left him and the cottage for glittering London. Just as I expected, this was an exciting and very well-written crime novel. Martin Edwards is in great shape!