Evan Can Wait (Constable Evans Mysteries) - Hardcover

Bowen, Rhys

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312265875 ISBN 13: 9780312265878

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2001

Synopsis

Constable Evan Evans, sole police officer in the charming Welsh village of Llanfair, is assigned to assist an expedition to raise a World War II German bomber plane from a lake. The whole venture is being filmed for a documentary on World War II and Evans tries to assist the film crew by finding them local people with stories to tell. Little does he realize that resurrecting the past can sometimes mean opening old wounds. After some unhappy confrontations, it is not just the villagers who are upset by the filmmakers. Evans' own life is thrown into turmoil as he discovers his girlfriend Bronwen's past relationship with someone from the film crew.

Tensions build until one of the filmmakers disappears and is eventually found dead in a nearby slate mine. The case grows more complex as Evans slowly uncovers evidence that the victim had many enemies. In the process Evans also exposes an elaborate World War II scheme to hide paintings from the National Gallery. Do these paintings have something to do with the filmmaker's disappearance? How could he be connected to events that took place over half a century ago?

With this fifth addition to her critically acclaimed series, Rhys Bowen creates a colorful, page-turning mystery set in two eras against the backdrop of a uniquely appealing small town filled with unforgettable characters.

About this title

Review:

The descent by a group of egocentric, flamboyant filmmakers on a small town has been the setup for a number of novels and a few movies. Rhys Bowen takes her crack at it with a tidy little story about a group of documentarians who invade a small village in Wales to capture the raising of a sunken German bomber on film. Llanfair is surrounded by abandoned mineshafts, and when the bombastic producer Grantley Smith is found murdered in one of them, Constable Evan Evans, Bowen's series hero, stumbles down more than a few dead ends before he uncovers the motive. Finding evidence of a stash of paintings from the National Gallery that were hidden at the scene of the murder, Evan uncovers a decades-old plot involving art forgery that doesn't really have much to do with the murder except coincidence. It does, however, keep the narrative moving, as does a love affair between the constable and the schoolteacher, who turns out to have been married to one of the filmmakers. All's well that ends well--except, probably, for the unfortunate title punning to which Bowen (Evan Help Us, Evanly Choirs, and so forth) seems addicted. --Jane Adams

From the Author:

With Evan Can Wait I wanted to write a book that showed more depth and breadth than the previous books in the series. I wanted to reveal Evan's emotions and to spread the tale onto a broader canvas. What started off as a brief interview with old Trefor Thomas, who worked in the slate mine during the war, became one of the main threads of the book. Trefor just took over the story and wouldn't go away. When I had finished I realized that I had two parallel tales--fifty years apart--the stories mirror images of each other to an alarming degree. Very satisfying--for my readers too, I hope.

About this edition

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0312265875
• ISBN 13: 9780312265878
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240