Tangled Web UK Review July 2008
A Mortal Curiosity by
Ann Granger
pbk out July 08
(Headline)
at £11.99
Picking up a novel by Ann Granger always assures the reader of a good tale well-written and this one is no exception. It is one of her Lizzie Martin and Inspector Benjamin Ross series of Victorian mysteries, concerning a detective officer of the Metropolitan Police and his potential fiancée, both Derbyshire folk who have ended up in The Smoke. Lizzie, a mature orphan, has been acting as a companion to her aunt in London, an uneasy situation. An opportunity for the aunt to shunt her off comes when Lizzie is sent to act as a temporary companion to the daughter of a friend, who has recently lost her young baby. Lizzie goes down to a lonely house in Hampshire, where two old sisters, one a real dragon, have the household in an autocratic grip. A doctor arrives from London, who runs a private mental clinic, to study the strange sate of mind of Lucy Roche, the bereaved eighteen-year old mother, who refuses to accept that her baby is dead. Her undesirable husband has previously been packed off to China by the employing father.
Ben Ross is uneasy at Lizzie’s departure and this is confirmed when a local rat-catcher is found murdered in the garden of the house and Ben is sent down there to investigate.
The crux of the plot is not that hard to spot by the half-way mark, but it is a good story and the standard of writing lifts it above many similar tales of Victorian times, with all its hypocrisy and stilted formalities.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Thousands of New and used Books at your Fingertips...
Support Tangled Web - Buy Your Books Online
