Touch and Go

Lawyer Lennox Kemp returns in a case that begins with the death of his ex-wife, a gambling addict, and her bequest to Lennox, which involves him with a Las Vegas casino and a search for missing rubies.

A copy of the latest will written by widowed Muriel Probert shortly before her lonely death in a posh Manhattan apartment indicates that she left a suitcase filled with rubies and shares in a Las Vegas casino to her first husband, British lawyer Lennox Kemp (featured in A Worm of Doubt and six other mysteries). But the jewels and the legal copy of the will are missing, as is the self-effacing nurse Smith, who cared for Muriel during her last weeks. Kemp--intelligent, skeptical but above all a dedicated Don Quixote--begins a transatlantic investigation of those near Muriel at the end: her longtime housekeeper Florence (recently wed to the strange new butler), a slow-witted maid, nurse Smith, the doctor, the lawyers, and most of all Muriel's late husband's menacing partners in the casino. The absorbing tale is somewhat flawed by an occasionally careless blend of British expressions with stereotypical American slang. But the scenes with the dying Muriel are affecting, the resolution is intriguing and the central characters--Lennox and nurse Smith--are appealing enough to engage the reader right to the end.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Lawyer Lennox Kemp--his divorce, disgrace, and disbarment far behind him (This Blessed Plot, 1991, etc.)--is serenely practicing law in the London suburb of Newtown when he's informed of the death, in New York, of ex-wife Muriel. Remarried, rich and widowed, Muriel has left a fortune in gambling casinos to Preston Madison and Clive Horth, the shady partners who run them--or at least that's according to the will held by the impeccable firm of Eikenberg and Lazard, who now have evidence that a later will, duly executed but vanished, has left everything, including a raft of ruby jewels, to ex-husband Lennox Kemp. Those jewels have disappeared, too--in the possession of nurse Madeline Smith, now the hunted quarry of Madison and Horth, whose long reach extends even to the quiet environs of Newtown. A just-believable plot contrivance leads in time to a tense and neatly resolved windup that pushes Lennox's lawyerly skills to the limit. Vividly rounded characters and a literate, unpompous style add up to a warmly engrossing new chapter in the life and times of Lennox Kemp. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.