The Devil in Disguise by
Martin Edwards
hbk out September 98
Published by Hodder & Stoughton
at £16.99
These days it is not easy to create a credible amateur sleuth, but Martin Edwards has managed the job with considerable panache. The Devil in Disguise is the sixth novel in his Harry Devlin series. Harry is a self-deprecating Liverpool solicitor whose sense of curiosity is inextricably entangled with compassion and a dry, understated wit.
The novel’s title, like all those in the series, is taken from the title of a 1960s’ pop song. The story focuses on the Cavanaugh Trust, a Liverpool arts charity, which hires Harry to deal with a vexed question of a benefactor’s will - a will that unexpectedly does not benefit the Trust. Then Luke Dessaur, chairman of the Trust, vanishes; and when he reappears, fallen from the third-floor window of a hotel, he is very dead indeed.
Harry’s investigation leads him and the reader to a variety of strange places, from a Liverpool’s gentlemen’s club (the oldest in the country and equipped with the splendid collection of pornography in its members-only library) to the Speckled Band, a bookshop devoted to crime fiction; from the arms of a married woman, dangerously married to a notable Liverpudlian villain, to, at last, by way of another murder, to the sad and terrifying truth behind Luke Dessaur’s death.
Edwards puts a contemporary spin on many traditional ingredients. The result is his best book yet - literate, quirky and intelligent. The narrative is both psychologically plausible and intelligently plotted. Next one, please.
(
Andrew Taylor
- author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series)
The Devil in Disguise by
Martin Edwards