Fox Evil - Hardcover

Walters, Minette

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399150544 ISBN 13: 9780399150548

Publisher: Putnam Adult, 2003

Synopsis

Minette Walters's ninth novel, Fox Evil, set in the seemingly bucolic English countryside, establishes a blistering new standard for contemporary suspense.

When elderly Ailsa Lockyer-Fox is found dead in her garden, dressed only in nightclothes and with bloodstains on the ground near her body, the finger of suspicion points at her wealthy husband, Colonel James Lockyer-Fox. A coroner's investigation deems it death by natural causes, but the gossip surrounding James refuses to go away.

Friendless and alone, James and his reclusive behavior begins to alarm his attorney, whose concern deepens when he discovers that his client has become the victim of a relentless campaign accusing him of far worse than the death of his wife. James is unwilling to fight the allegations, choosing instead to devote his energies to a desperate search for the illegitimate granddaughter who may prove his savior as he battles for his name-and his life.

About this title

About the Author

Minette Walters is the author of eight previous novels, including Acid Row, named one of Publishers Weekly's Best Novels of 2002. Her work has been translated into thirty-two languages.

Reviews

Walters (The Ice House; The Sculptress; Acid Row) is considered by many to be the preeminent crime novelist writing in England today. This psychological thriller, her ninth novel, should satisfy both aficionados of the traditional English cozy and readers who prefer mysteries with a grimmer edge. Walters's dark drama unfolds in the tiny Dorset village of Shenstead, where Col. James Lockyer-Fox's wife, Ailsa, dressed only in flimsy nightclothes and boots, has been found dead on the terrace of Shenstead Manor. A coroner's jury declares James not guilty, but a telephone harassment campaign by unknown persons accuses him not only of the murder but other heinous crimes as well. This unrelenting pressure drives the colonel into a deep and debilitating depression. London solicitor Mark Ankerton steps in to prove his friend James innocent and to clear up the question of just what Ailsa was doing locked out of the house on a freezing night in her underwear and Wellies. His investigation leads him to a nearby group of Travelers-modern-day gypsies who roam the countryside in converted buses-who are squatting on unclaimed land, attempting to seize the property. The Travelers are led by the monstrously evil Fox, whose own agenda is much more complicated than a simple desire for free real estate. Award winner Walters rounds out her novel with several subplots, including confrontations between fox hunters and hunt saboteurs and other small scandals of rural life, all tied in the end to the resolution of the story. The writer's many fans will thoroughly enjoy this hefty, stand-alone mystery, but psychological thriller readers who are more interested in thrills than psychology may find the going a bit too slow and the eventual denouement too complicated by half.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The title of Walters' latest fright fest comes from a peculiarly virulent kind of skin disorder, in which hair falls out in mangy clumps. It also serves as the delightful nickname of one of Walters' main characters in this compulsive page-turner, which puts a deranged spin on the conventional village cozy. The matriarch of a wealthy family is found dead in the garden, bloodstains near her night-gowned form. The chief suspect is her husband, Colonel James Lockyer Fox; suspicion against him grows even after he has been officially cleared by the coroner. From this traditional start, Walters' narrative takes detours: into the worlds of fox-hunting saboteurs and down-and-outers living in a caravan park just outside the village. She also throws in the colonel's attempts to reconcile with his illegitimate granddaughter. All this, against the backdrop of growing community hostility toward the colonel, makes for a novel that becomes increasingly intriguing as the reader realizes how the plotlines intersect. Walters, who has won both the American Edgar and the British Gold Dagger Award, is expert at ratcheting up suspense while she portrays credibly confused and terrified characters meeting their fates. Great psychological acuity in a hair-raising suspense story. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

JUNE 2001

THE FOX SLIPPED QUIETLY through the night in search of food, with only the occasional flash of his white-tipped brush flagging his presence. The scent of a badger set his nose quivering, and he skirted the piece of track where the territorial marker had been laid. A shy, nervous creature, he had more sense than to cross the path of a voracious fighter with powerful jaws and poisonous teeth.

He had no such fear of the smell of burning tobacco. It spoke to him of bread and milk for himself, and pieces of chicken for his vixen and her cubs-easier plunder than a nighttime's wearisome hunting for voles and field mice. Ever suspicious, he stood for several minutes, watching and listening for alien movement. There was none. Whoever was smoking was as quiet and still as he. Finally, in trustful response to the Pavlovian stimulus, he crept toward the familiar smell, unaware that a rolled cigarette was different from the pipe he was used to.

The illegal trap, a maiming device of metal teeth, sprang shut on his delicate foreleg with the biting power of a huge badger, tearing the flesh and snapping the bone. He screamed in pain and anger, lashing at the empty night in search of his imagined adversary. For all his supposed cunning, he hadn't been clever enough to recognize that the motionless figure beside a tree bore no resemblance to the patient old man who regularly fed him.

The woodland burst with sound in response to his terror. Birds fluttered on their perches, nocturnal rodents scurried into hiding. Another fox-perhaps his vixen-barked an alarm from across the field. As the figure turned toward him, drawing a hammer from his coat pocket, the shaved tracks in the mane of hair must have suggested a bigger, stronger foe than the fox could cope with, because he ceased his screaming and dropped in whimpering humility to his belly. But there was no mercy in the deliberate crushing of his little pointed muzzle before the trap was forced open and, still alive, his brush was sliced from his body with a cut-throat razor.

His tormentor spat his cigarette to the ground and mashed it under his heel before tucking the brush in his pocket and seizing the animal by its scruff. He slipped as quietly through the trees as the fox had done earlier, coming to a halt at the edge of the woods and melting into the shadow of an oak. Fifty feet away, across the ha-ha ditch, the old man was on his feet on the terrace, staring toward the treeline, a shotgun leveled at shoulder height toward his unseen watcher. The backwash from the lights inside his open French windows showed his face grim with anger. He knew the cry of an animal in pain, knew that its abrupt cessation meant the creature's jaw had been smashed. He should have done. This wasn't the first time a broken body had been tossed at his feet.

He never saw the whirl of the black-sleeved, black-gloved arm as it lobbed the dying fox toward him, but he caught the streaks of white as the tumbling paws flashed in the lamplight. With murder in his heart he aimed below them and fired both barrels.

DORSET ECHO, SATURDAY, 25 AUGUST 2001

TRAVELER INVASION

THE ROLLING DOWNLAND of Dorset's Ridgeway has become home to the largest illegal caravan park in the country's history. Police estimate that some 200 mobile homes and over 500 gypsies and travelers have gathered at scenic Barton Edge for an August Bank Holiday rave.

From the windows of Bella Preston's psychedelic bus, the soon-to-be-designated World Heritage site of Dorset's Jurassic coastline unfolds in all its glory. To the left, the majestic cliffs of Ringstead Bay, to the right the stunning crag of Portland Bill, ahead the dazzling blue of the English Channel.

"This is the best view anywhere in England," says Bella, 35, cuddling her three daughters.

"The kids love it. We always try to spend our summers here." Bella, a single mother from Essex, who describes herself as a "social worker," was one of the first to arrive. "The rave was proposed when we were at Stonehenge for the solstice in June. Word spread quickly, but we hadn't expected so many."

Dorset police were alerted when an abnormal number of traveler-style vehicles entered the county yesterday morning. Roadblocks were set up along the routes leading to Barton Edge in an attempt to stop the invasion. The result was a series of jams, some five miles long, that angered locals and bona fide tourists who were caught in the net. With the travelers' vehicles unable to turn around in the confined space of the narrow Dorset lanes, the decision was taken to allow the gathering to happen.

Farmer Will Harris, 58, whose fields have been taken over by the illegal encampment, is angered by police and local authority impotence to act. "I've been told I'll be arrested if I provoke these people," he fumed. "They're destroying my fences and crops, but if I complain and someone gets hurt then it's my fault. Is that justice?"

Sally Macey, 48, Traveler Liaison Officer for the local authority, said last night that the travelers had been served with a formal notice to quit. She agreed that the serving of notices was a game. "Travelers operate on the basis that seven days is the usual length of stay," she said. "They tend to move on just before the order comes into effect. In the meantime we ask them to refrain from intimidatory behavior and to ensure that their rubbish is disposed of in nominated sites."

This cut no ice with Mr. Harris who pointed to the sacks of litter dumped at the entrance to his farm. "This will be all over the place tomorrow when the foxes get at these bags. Who's going to pay for the cleanup? It cost a farmer 10,000 to clear his land in Devon after an encampment half this size."

Bella Preston expressed sympathy. "If I lived here I wouldn't like it either. Last time we held a rave of this size, 2000 teens came from the local towns to join in. I'm sure it will happen again. The music goes on all night and it's pretty loud."

A police spokesman agreed. "We are warning local people that the noise nuisance will last throughout the weekend. Unfortunately there is little we can do in these situations. Our priority is to avoid unnecessary confrontation." He confirmed that an influx of youngsters from Bournemouth and Weymouth was likely. "A free open-air rave is a big draw. Police will be on hand, but we expect the event to pass off peacefully."

Mr. Harris is less optimistic. "If it doesn't, my farm will be in the middle of a war zone," he said. "There aren't enough policemen in Dorset to shift this lot. They'll have to bring in the army."

--from Fox Evil by Minette Walters, copyright © 2003 Minette Walters, published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., all rights reserved, reprinted with permission from the publisher.

Edition details

• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0399150544
• ISBN 13: 9780399150548
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384