A Day for Dying: An Inspector Luke Thanet Mystery - Hardcover

Simpson, Dorothy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684815680 ISBN 13: 9780684815688

Publisher: Scribner, 1996

Synopsis

When playboy Max Jeopard is killed at his own engagement party, Inspector Luke Thanet is called in to investigate and uncovers a host of suspects, including his fiancee, a jealous brother, an ex-girlfriend, and the victim's future in-laws

About this title

Review:

The thirteenth police novel featuring Inspector Luke Thanet, who has to solve a mysteriously callous murder case--the prospective bridegroom at an upper-class engagement party is thrown into the swimming pool and left there to drown. Simpson lays out plenty of clues, from love letters to blackmail notes, revealing the victim to have been less than a gentleman, and his high class circle a mess of interconnected relationships. Thanet, of course, will discover whodunnit. The thrill comes in following him as he does so.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Sturrenden's Inspector Luke Thanet and his ever supportive Sergeant Mike Lineham are again investigating a murder in the upper-middle-class environs of town (No Laughing Matter, 1993, etc.). The victim is travel-writer-playboy Max Jeopard, who's found dead, fully clothed, in the swimming pool of hosts Ralph and Marion Sylvester, during a party celebrating Max's engagement to their daughter Tess. Max and Tess have had a stormy, off-on relationship, and the party itself seems to have been less than celebratory--with Max having been slapped by ex-girlfriend Anthea and snubbed by Tess's ex-fianc‚ Gerald Argent, and with the Sylvesters' schizophrenic son Carey having escaped briefly from the care of his nurse Michael Roper. Thanet spots something strange, too, in the relationship of the Sylvesters to their bejewelled, BMW-owning housekeeper Barbara Mallis. The key to it all lies in Max's monumentally selfish, charismatic persona, and Thanet, in one of his intuitive flashes, dredges up a bit of overlooked (but not by the alert reader) evidence and almost reluctantly nails down the culprit. This time out, a rather subdued Thanet goes through his civilized paces, here dealing compassionately with a very contemporary dilemma and adding a thoughtful, readable, slightly tepid case history to the author's respected body of work. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0684815680
• ISBN 13: 9780684815688
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288