The Poison Pool - Hardcover

Hall, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312098944 ISBN 13: 9780312098940

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1993

Synopsis

When an elderly man dies and a retarded youth is charged with the murder, the resulting investigation reaches into the heart of their small English community and all the way to the highest levels of government

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Reviews

This auspicious debut is set in a modern England where the landscape is dotted with council houses as well as country homes and where class differences are not to be ignored. An anonymous tip prompts Detective-Inspector Alex Sinclair of the town of Milford to bring in Joey Macready for questioning about the murder of retiree Tom Carter. Since Joey was brain-damaged at birth, Alex wants him to be treated as a minor. But autocratic Detective-Superintendent Eddy Greaves promptly secures a full confession and charges Joey: case closed. Stepping in to help is Kate Weston, who lives next to Joey and his mother and is an employee of the local "advice centre," which establishes a defense committee. Alex is sympathetic to Kate's efforts--in part because she is more civil to him than is his socially upscale, emotionally distant wife--but loyalty to the force keeps him from voicing his qualms about the case. It is Kate, whom people trust and talk to, who first suspects that the disappearance of Carter's young fishing partner may not be coincidental and that a thorough murder investigation could reach into some surprising corners. As Alex and Kate maneuver their way through an action-filled plot and the beginnings of attraction, they establish themselves as a pair readers will root for and hope to see again.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Arresting retarded young Joey Macready for the fatal beating of old Tom Carter looks like a fast way to close the case, but it's just the beginning of Inspector Alex Sinclair's problems. Even before Joey hangs himself in his cell, other tenants in his housing project--whipped on by social worker Derek Stevenson--are out for Sinclair's blood. And when, shunning Superintendent Eddie Greaves's offer of sponsorship to a fast-track Masonic lodge and doubting Joey's guilt, he follows up new information about Tom's concern about the dangerous pollution levels intermittently killing the fish downstream from Highcliffe Beck, he's framed for bribery, summarily suspended, and sued for divorce (the inevitable murderous assaults on him and Stevenson's sympathetic underling Kate Weston are right around the corner). Sinclair toils manfully against an impossible deadline to link a 40-year-old crime to that all-too-clubby lodge--in a workmanline debut. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The arrest of a mentally deficient teen for the murder of an old man leads to the unofficial partnership between Det. Insp. Alex Sinclair and social worker Kate Weston in Milford, England. Public outrage over the boy's arrest at first detours their investigation, but Sinclair finally figures out what dangerous facts the old man knew. Meanwhile, trumped-up theft charges against Kate's son and allegations of bribery against Sinclair point to behind-the-scenes corruption. This first novel, which portrays a gritty side of the British procedural, promises good things to come.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312098944
• ISBN 13: 9780312098940
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1