Murder Confounded

The latest puzzle to rouse Enrique Alvarez's sleepy Spanish island begins with an Englishman hospitalized for a suspicious pattern of cigarette burns on his body. The fact that the burns form a circle on Franklin Gore's chest would indicate that he has been tortured, but if so, why would he insist that the burns are accidental?
Faced with a stubborn Englishman who adamantly refuses all offers of police protection, Alvarez is almost convinced to let the matter drop - until a local peeping Tom is assaulted outside Gore's home. Villagers are quick to imprison a wandering gypsy for the attack, but Alvarez understands the ways of rural prejudice, and knows how locals can repeat - and whole-heartedly believe - falsehoods, without lying. Alvarez is convinced that the wrong man is in jail, and that Gore is still in danger, but everyone else on the force is content to believe the locals. Alas, as the old Mallorcan saying goes, a fool is far too foolish to understand a wise man, but a wise man is far too wise to understand a fool. Which, Alvarez wonders, am l?
Alvarez's investigation eventually takes him to England and back in pursuit of a man's secret identity and an organization of terrorists. But perhaps the Inspector is allowing complex assassination plots to blind him to a very simple motive for murder....

Embracing equal parts charm and cunning, Inspector Enrique Alvarez of Majorca knows his Mediterranean island to be both a tourist trap and a land of magic. It seems not so much the latter when Englishman Franklin Gore is hospitalized with serious bruises and cigarette burns on his body. Initially, Gore insists he fell off a ladder (while smoking); when he admits to being tortured, two locals, an overly curious boy and a gipsy, come under suspicion. The dogged Alvarez leaves his kitchen, where his wife creates wonders, to learn that Gore's name is assumed and that he's actually a ladies' man with one lady who has a husband. Jeffries's pacing is deceptive: he seems to linger on the topographical detail or culinary aside, yet soon Alvarez is in England probing Gore's past. The Majorcan inspector employs powers of intuition that lead him swiftly through a maze of possibilities turning on issues of mistaken identity, incest and honor. Following Murder's Long Memory , this, the 16th Alvarez outing, is a procedural delight.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Sixteenth in this easy-to-take series featuring Majorcan Police Inspector Enrique Alvarez (Murder's Long Memory, etc.) and his long-running battles with food, drink, and Superior Chief Salas. When Englishman Franklin Gore is hospitalized with injuries suffered in what he insists was a household accident, Alvarez sees a clear case of assault and torture. An attack in Gore's garden on Peeping Tom Vicente Otero deepens a puzzle that's further complicated when Alvarez identifies Gore's frequent lady visitor as Vivien, much younger wife of very rich Sir Donald Macadie, an English expatriate retired to the island. Vivien's explanation of her relationship with Gore sends Alvarez to England, where he verifies Gore's connection to undercover work with terrorists. What he finds back in Majorca puts all the island's security forces on alert--until matters fizzle to an ironic anticlimax. Not on the level of Jeffries's best, but Alvarez retains his gentle charm (fans might wish the author would give him a life), and his latest outing provides an affable diversion. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.