Murder Confounded - Hardcover

Jeffries, Roderic

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002324326 ISBN 13: 9780002324328

Publisher: Collins Crime Club, 1993

Synopsis

First Edition. A near fine copy in a VG+, price clipped dust jacket. Soiling to the edges of the book's upper page block. Mild toning to the page margins. The dust jacket has rubs to its spine tips and corners.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Sixteenth in this easy-to-take series featuring Majorcan Police Inspector Enrique Alvarez (Murder's Long Memory, etc.) and his long-running battles with food, drink, and Superior Chief Salas. When Englishman Franklin Gore is hospitalized with injuries suffered in what he insists was a household accident, Alvarez sees a clear case of assault and torture. An attack in Gore's garden on Peeping Tom Vicente Otero deepens a puzzle that's further complicated when Alvarez identifies Gore's frequent lady visitor as Vivien, much younger wife of very rich Sir Donald Macadie, an English expatriate retired to the island. Vivien's explanation of her relationship with Gore sends Alvarez to England, where he verifies Gore's connection to undercover work with terrorists. What he finds back in Majorca puts all the island's security forces on alert--until matters fizzle to an ironic anticlimax. Not on the level of Jeffries's best, but Alvarez retains his gentle charm (fans might wish the author would give him a life), and his latest outing provides an affable diversion. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

Embracing equal parts charm and cunning, Inspector Enrique Alvarez of Majorca knows his Mediterranean island to be both a tourist trap and a land of magic. It seems not so much the latter when Englishman Franklin Gore is hospitalized with serious bruises and cigarette burns on his body. Initially, Gore insists he fell off a ladder (while smoking); when he admits to being tortured, two locals, an overly curious boy and a gipsy, come under suspicion. The dogged Alvarez leaves his kitchen, where his wife creates wonders, to learn that Gore's name is assumed and that he's actually a ladies' man with one lady who has a husband. Jeffries's pacing is deceptive: he seems to linger on the topographical detail or culinary aside, yet soon Alvarez is in England probing Gore's past. The Majorcan inspector employs powers of intuition that lead him swiftly through a maze of possibilities turning on issues of mistaken identity, incest and honor. Following Murder's Long Memory , this, the 16th Alvarez outing, is a procedural delight.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Collins Crime Club
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0002324326
• ISBN 13: 9780002324328
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1