No Laughing Matter: An Inspector Luke Thanet Mystery - Hardcover

Simpson, Dorothy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684196263 ISBN 13: 9780684196268

Publisher: Scribner, 1993

Synopsis

Inspector Luke Thanet investigates the grisly death of Zak Randish, winemaker and owner of the Sturrenden Vineyard, whose jugular vein was severed when he was forced through a window pane.

About this title

About the Author:

Dorothy Simpson worked as a French teacher and then marriage guidance counsellor before writing full-time. She won the Crime Writers' Association's Silver Dagger Award in 1985. She is married with three children and lives near Maidstone, Kent, the background to the Thanet novels.

From Publishers Weekly:

". . .Unlike the living, the dead have no means of safeguarding their secrets," thinks detective inspector Luke Thanet in his 12th case, while viewing the corpse of vintner Zak Randish. The victim's jugular vein was severed when he was shoved through a window of his winery's laboratory, the scene of considerable violence. Thanet bypasses such mundane stuff as physical evidence (he has only one suspect's shoes checked for broken glass and we never learn the result), preferring instead to dig deeply into the dead man's unsavory past. Uncovering wife-beating and crass womanizing for starters, Thanet finds an ugly secret under each overturned stone, exposing the last secret, a real shocker, that leads to a stunning outcome. Adding dimension to the picture are leisurely looks at Thanet's daughter Bridget's unhappy romance, peripheral characters' battles with anorexia, dyslexia, leukemia and post-partum depression and the difficulties of British winemakers, struggling along without "any of the grants the French and Germans get." Simpson ( Wake the Dead ) has written an absorbing tale, but much of the action takes place offstage. Mystery Guild selection.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0684196263
• ISBN 13: 9780684196268
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 262