Winter Rules

Cork's golf-loving inspector Angus Trum finds a new mystery as he plays host to an African head-of-state and then travels to Africa, getting involved with the building of that county's first golf course and the trade in smuggled cars.

This tightly written new Angus Straun mystery (after Laid Dead ) allows the Scottish-born London police officer and novelist to combine his two loves: golf and luxury sports cars. Because of his knowledge of the former, Inspector Straun is assigned to guard Augustus Aligar, new ruler of the African nation of Chakra, who wants to learn more about British golf in hopes of developing the sport as a tourist attraction in his native land. At Rogues, an exclusive course founded by some extremely shady characters, someone takes a shot at Aligar, whose Rolls-Royce is subsequently stolen. We learn a great deal about the export market in heisted luxury cars, which are usually pre-selected for theft and then spirited out of the country, often to prime markets in Africa. Visiting Chakra at Aligar's invitation, Straun comes under machine-gun fire on the golf course; later, in a newspaper office, he sees a prepared headline: "Tragic Accident on Golf Course / Visiting Policeman Shot Dead." A coup attempt follows. Under golf's Winter Rules, Straun had previously explained to Aligars, "you can get away with murder"--but not with the brainy Angus on the job in a drily witty tale whose low-key style will appeal to fans of the traditional British crime novel.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The latest in the sprightly series (Laid Dead, 1991, etc.) about London's golfer-novelist-car-freak Inspector Angus Straun finds Angus being pressed into service by Special Branch. Augustus (``call me Gus'') Aligar, the golf-playing, American-educated new president of Chakra, in Africa, is informally visiting London and wants to play the course at the Rogues Club. Who better than Angus to be bodyguard-golf partner? He and literary-agent/girlfriend Laurie join Gus and his stunning mistress, Kiki Boucher, for a round that's cut short when someone takes a shot at them and it's discovered that Gus's hired Rolls is missing from the parking lot. With his own elegant Maserati recently stolen and crashed, Angus explores the netherworld of car theft and finds a tenuous connection to Chakra. Invited by Gus to visit that country and play the only--and still unfinished--course there, Angus becomes embroiled in much more serious mischief that involves Gus's survival and, peripherally, some shady doings very close to home. Angus's first-person narrative is chipper and entertaining, but too many threads makes knots in the flow of the plot and dissipate tension. Fun, but less than Cork's best. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.