Death Takes Time

Unable to make the connection between two possibly related murders, time-conscious Majorca inspector Enrique Alvarez interviews a handful of suspects and finds himself enjoying his interviews with the flirtatious Honor Seymour.

Once again the long-suffering Inspector Enrique Alvarez of Majorca is pitted against his demanding boss in Madrid and his bossy sister-in-law-and, in this latest case (after Murder Confounded), three puzzling murders. An Englishwoman dies in a fall from her terrace in the south of France. The police suspect foul play, but their only evidence is a rental car from Majorca. Told to trace the car, Alvarez is diverted by the sudden death, from a heroin overdose, of an English resident of the island. Alvarez learns that the dead man was not an addict shortly before a third body is found, shot to death. After uncovering a blackmail plot that may connect the three victims, the inspector faces a seemingly impossible timetable for the murders. He also must confront his infatuation with Honor, the heroin victim's former lover. An unauthorized trip to England gets Alvarez in deep official trouble before he works out the kinks in the Mobius-strip time line of the deaths. And there's a final surprise involving Honor in this latest demonstration of Alvarez's easy charm.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Two murders that mightn't look like murder to anyone but Mallorca's sharp-eyed Inspector Enrique Alvarez (Murder Confounded, 1993, etc.). First Bridget Orr (not that it's her real name) takes a fatal tumble from the terrace of her villa in snooty La Malon Haute, then well-heeled rotter Hugh Robson gets a fatal overdose of heroin in his own eyrie. Orr's maid insists that she was afraid of heights and would never have ventured close enough to the railing to have fallen over, but it's Alvarez who realizes that the absence from Robson's house of any hypodermics or containers suitable for carrying heroin means that he was murdered. How are the two deaths connected? An endless trail of interviews--with Robson's alluring last lover, the gardener who pinched some of Robson's daffodil bulbs, the golf partner whose wife says Robson cheated, and the business partner who had a œ10,000 difference of opinion with him- -paints a picture of an eminently murderable man; but even after a routine trip to Robson's bank reveals a scabrous homemade videotape, it takes a third ``accidental'' death (a car crash victim shot in the head) to show the link between the first two. Whether he's enduring his cousin's domestic ministrations or getting disciplined for bearding the rich and mighty in their English lairs, Alvarez is as agreeable as ever as his creator puts a gentle spin on Chaucer's ``Pardoner's Tale.'' -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

It's remarkable how Jeffries, after 16 Inspector Alvarez mysteries, still manages to inject new life into what is now a very familiar formula. After all, there's the same setting (Mallorca); the same recurring minor characters (volatile cousin Dolores, haughty Superior Chief Salas, and an attractive and single young Englishwoman somehow involved with a murder); the same plot device (an expatriate English citizen gets murdered); and the same inspector (low key, brandy loving, and always a believer in taking it easy). Yet we're never bored, partly because the stories always move at a brisk clip (despite the inspector's lethargic bent), and partly because the plot twists and turns as much as the old roads on Mallorca. In this latest installment in the consistently entertaining series, Jeffries once again proves that with deft plotting and a solid feel for locale, it is quite possible to take the standard British police procedural, transplant it abroad, and watch it thrive. And that's all there is to say except get this one into the hands of your Alvarez fans as quickly as possible. Stuart Miller