1994 mystery, seventh of Granger's novels of Chief Inspector Alan
Markby and non-detective Meredith Mitchell. At the Chelsea Flower
Show, the pair run into Meredith's old school friend Rachel (who turns
out to be Markby's ex-wife) with her new husband Alex. But it won't be a
long acquaintanceship.
Of course after Alex (foreign, rich) drops dead, both of our
principals end up helping out the widow (who is a shameless
manipulator), and indeed I think this is the first time in the series
that Markby has been involved as a bystander rather than through his
police job. That's interesting, but we end up in a claustrophobic
village with a domineering mother, her cowed but resentful son, and a
constant niggle that even apart from the murder and its sequelæ things
just aren't quite right.
Which is fine, but the revelation of the truth rests on an unheralded
rabbit being pulled out of a hat (to the extent that I checked chapter
numbers to be sure I hadn't got an edition that missed one). At least
one of the murders is not only pointless but utterly out of character
for what we eventually learn about the murderer.
There are bits that do work, for me particularly the descriptive prose
and Meredith's early investigations, but even allowing for Meredith's
tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time this feels like a
novel in which the investigators don't so much solve the mystery as
bear witness to it.