Close Quarters - Softcover

Clare Curzon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0373262922 ISBN 13: 9780373262922

Publisher: Worldwide Library, 1998

Synopsis

Members of Mike Yeading's Thames Valley team begin to think they have a serial killer on their hands when one woman is brutally murdered and another barely escapes a similar attack, and also find themselves uncomfortable with the return of outsider detective D. J. Jenner. Reprint.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Another baffling case for Superintendent Mike Yeadings and his Thames Valley team (Fast Mischief, 1996, etc.)--Detective Sergeants Beaumont and newly promoted Rosemary Zyczynski, augmented this time by out-of-district, heartily disliked Inspector Jenner. A woman's corpse has been found on the riverbank in Mardham village--40ish, strangled, and unknown to any of the villagers closely questioned by Yeadings's officers. Among these are pretty music student Gayle Dawson, who'd been frightened by a stalker the previous night on her way home from the railroad station; her sharp-eyed landlady Olive George; elderly May Snelling and her hulking, dim-witted son Harry. Nearby are suave lawyer Donald Field, his rich, society- minded wife Phyllida, and their teenage twins--clownish Colin and quiet Rachel. Their next-door neighbors are physician Stanley Goodwin, a man tortured by ill health and by the affair his wife Meredith is blatantly conducting with Donald Field. Meredith's bachelor brother Malcolm Barrow lives with them. The interviews with all of those, and many others, are unproductive at first, but the corpse is finally identified as Sheena Chadwick, a London prostitute whose estranged husband's van has been seen in the vicinity. As it develops, Sheena's murder is but the first in a series that will tax Yeadings's instincts and expertise to the max. A tightly constructed village procedural, well up to the author's standards for byzantine plotting, solidly realized characters, and a steady flow of suspenseful incident. A treat for fans of the genre; the heavily detailed, sometimes tedious police workings may be a minus for others. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

Superintendent Mike Yeadings (Nice People, 1995, etc.) returns with his team to investigate murder in the tidy English village of Mardham. The day after a music student escapes a stalker on her way home from the train, a watchman finds the body of a London prostitute who has been strangled and had her hair chopped off. The investigation turns up the usual unsavory doings in suburbia?alcoholism, adultery, malice and troubled teenagers?but only one suspect, a young man named Harry Snelling. Large and gentle and burdened by special problems, Snelling has only recently moved to the area; he likes to roam the woods behind the suburban homes at night to escape from his overprotective mother. Since Yeadings has a child with Down Syndrome and Detective Inspector Jenner, also on the case, has a reputation for mishandling the mentally handicapped, the stage is set for a dramatic and enlightening confrontation. Unfortunately, the plot lurches to a second stalking, a second death that turns out to be suicide and a third murderous attack, concluding only after two more deaths. Mere shadows of their former selves, the police move clumsily from one incident to the next, trying to work around the unwanted Jenner. Weighted down with too many crimes, too many characters and too many confusing shifts in point of view, the novel will be a disappointment to Curzon's fans.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Worldwide Library
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0373262922
• ISBN 13: 9780373262922
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 253