Every Breath You Take: Introducing Laura Principal - Hardcover

Spring, Michelle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671870912 ISBN 13: 9780671870911

Publisher: Pocket Books, 1994

Synopsis

When a woman with whom she shares a weekend getaway cottage is suddenly murdered, private investigator Laura Principal searches for a motive and a killer, as the culprit moves closer and closer to Laura's beloved retreat

About this title

About the Author

Michelle Spring is a Professor of Sociology at a British university.

Reviews

In her first mystery, Spring, a sociology professor, introduces Laura Principal, who has abandoned her own academic career to work as a London PI with Sonny Mendlowitz, her professional and personal partner. Laura and her friend Helen, who jointly own a cottage in Norfolk, decide to take in a third partner to share expenses; they settle on Monica Harcourt, a painter and academic--despite Laura's sense that there is "something not quite right" about her. When Laura stops by Monica's Cambridge flat and finds the body of her new housemate tied to a chair, fatally stabbed and beaten, she becomes obsessed with this woman she previously didn't even like very much and is determined to sort out the murder. Laura's in luck: a policewoman assigned to the case is a former student and includes Laura on the periphery; the staff at the university where Monica worked are as willing to share information and the late woman's effects with Laura as with the police. Such contrivances and a few plot holes limit this debut's success, but a smart pace and the suggestion that the promising Sonny might have a larger role in the future warrant a look at a sequel.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

London p.i. Laura Principal's plan to take a third housemate for Wildfell Cottage, the country house she shares with librarian Helen Cochrane, comes to grief when Monica Harcourt, the haunted painter she and Helen are ready to take on, is killed (stabbed, strangled, hammered) in her Cambridge flat. Grabbing spare hours from the two cases she's getting paid for--both unrelated but neatly worked out- -Laura digs into Monica's life and soon finds unexpected involvements with a sleazy college provost, who asks special favors in return for approving grant proposals, and a fiery anti-abortion M.P. Monica caught practically with his pants down. Be warned: the real killer is so well hidden as to be practically invisible. Already in her first novel, pseudonymous British academic Spring (sociology/Anglia Polytechnic) is a dab hand at teasing the most plausible suspects out of the woodwork. The prevailing mode is British--deft, unblinking, understated--but never too intoxicated with its own literacy. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Domestic detail and descriptions of setting tend to clutter rather than clarify Spring's first novel at the outset. Extended narrative wandering finally yeild's to one-way vision with the discovery of a college artist's mutilated body by London-based private investigator Laura Principal. With backup from best chum Helen, a librarian, Laura struggles to "unmask" the murderer, who stalks them at their country cottage. Missing photographs, possible government scandal, and sexist university politics all add interest but fail to smooth out an uneven effort. Look for the second.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671870912
• ISBN 13: 9780671870911
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 246