According to the Evidence (Richard Pryor Mysteries, 2) - Hardcover

Knight, Bernard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0727869868 ISBN 13: 9780727869869

Publisher: Severn House, 2011

Synopsis

A forensic mystery of the 1950s - After starting their risky venture of a private forensic consultancy, Doctor Richard Pryor – now a Home Office pathologist – and forensic biologist Angela Bray have now become firmly established. An apparent bizarre suicide in a remote Welsh farm starts them on a new investigation, which is followed by an unusual request from the War Office. And when a Cotswold veterinary surgeon is charged with poisoning his ailing wife, can Pryor’s expert evidence save him from the gallows?

About this title

About the Author

Bernard Knight is the author of the Crown John Mysteries series and is a member of The Medieval Murderers.

Review

The growing roster of the dead in the Wye Valley of Wales extends a thriving forensic practice by leaps and bounds. Word of mouth has given forensic pathologist Richard Pryor; his partner, former Home Office forensic scientist Angela Bray; and their lab tech Siān and housekeeper/secretary Moira more than enough to keep them busy. But new cases seem to arrive every day. Richard begins this round by checking out a death at a Welsh farm. It looks as if a mechanic there has been killed when a tractor he was working on slipped off the wooden blocks holding it up. Richard soon discovers that the accidental death is really murder. The man had been strangled, then hanged in a bid to make him appear a suicide, then crushed by the tractor in a final attempt to confuse the evidence. Richard's other big case is more complicated. A Cotswold veterinarian has been accused of murdering his wife, who was close to death from cancer. The case, which will require help from all the regulars, hinges on the amount of potassium found in her eyes. Retired pathologist Knight follows his last Pryor mystery (Where Death Delights, 2010) with another solid effort. Don't expect fireworks, just a character-driven look at the life of forensic scientists in 1950s Britain with a touch of romance. --Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2011

Six months after starting their private forensics practice in England's Wye Valley in 1955, pathologist Richard Pryor and forensic biologist Angela Bray (introduced in Where Death Delights, 2010) get three cases well beyond the routine: the apparent suicide of a mechanic found crushed beneath a tractor, the possible mercy killing of a dying cancer patient by her veterinarian husband, and the alleged murder of an army warrant officer by his colleague in a training exercise in the Mideast. Motive abounds in each case. The mechanic's partners wanted him out of their family business, the vet is having an affair, and the soldier was actively disliked. But evidence, collected with expertise and intuition (though without twenty first-century technology), leads to surprising conclusions. Adding spice are personal relationships, notably those between Pryor and Bray, who, somewhat scandalously for the times, share his home as well as workplace, and between Pryor and Moira Davison, the young widow who serves as secretary-cum-cook. A final twist promising complications ahead will leave readers waiting for the next installment of this entertaining series. --Booklist, March 15, 2011

About this edition

• Publisher: Severn House
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0727869868
• ISBN 13: 9780727869869
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224