Once Too Often

Jessica Manifest's questionable death spirits Inspector Luke Thanet away from his daughter's wedding preparations to investigate the victim's supposedly accidental death, and as he delves into her secretive past, he realizes that there are many people with motives for murdering her

Filled with misgivings about his daughter's upcoming wedding to a much wealthier (but less obviously committed) fianc, Inspector Luke Thanet can only pray that Bridget's marriage doesn't turn out like Jessica Dander's. That longtime Kent Messenger reporter's unhappy union has come to a suitably abrupt end with her fall down the household staircase. Or was she helped into her final flight--by her dispirited, laid-off husband Desmond Manifest; by her brother-in-law Bernard Covin; by her lover, estate agent Adam Ogilvy; or by the unknown figure she felt convinced was stalking her? Despite the bottom of those stairs becoming the place for what turns out to be a surreptitious parade of interlopers as numerous as the crowd of innocents in any Agatha Christie library, reliable Thanet and his sidekick, Sgt. Mike Lineham, close this modest case by uncovering a 20-year-old secret. In his 14th (A Day for Dying, 1996, etc.), Thanet, as usual, deftly unpeels the layers of unhappy deception shrouding the victim, though the result this time is a surprisingly long-winded anticlimax. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Inspector Luke Thanet's latest case involves the suspicious death of a newspaper reporter in the English village of Sturrenden. Suspects include the woman's unemployed battered husband, her estate-agent lover, the lover's angry wife, a reported neighborhood prowler, and others. Thanet's investigation proceeds with satisfying depth as he and Sergeant Lineham debate details of the case, theories about the murderer, and all the permutations thereof, but both suffer personal strain as well. As usual, Simpson (A Day for Dying, LJ 5/1/96) tailors her plot with skill and care, nicely dovetailing all the clues and reserving a special twist for the end. Strongly recommended.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.