Tangled Web UK Review February 2009
Oxford Menace by
Veronica Stallwood
hbk out September 08
Published by Headline
at £19.99
With a dozen or so ‘Oxford’ novels on the shelf, another is always welcome, with the familiar reappearance of writer Kate Ivory and her wayward mother Roz, getting into yet another situation which contains a murder or two.
Actually, in this one, Roz is almost absent, having gone abroad to parley with another ex-husband. The plot concerns an Oxford medical research laboratory targeted by Animal Rights activists.
A bomb is exploded, without deaths or injury, but Kerry, a young lab assistant is suspected of giving information to the activists. She is the girl-friend of Sam, the son of Kate’s friends, who also works in the laboratory. He is off to China on an exchange and gets Kate to keep an eye on the frightened girl - but she soon ends up dead in a hit-and-run accident.
Jon, Kate’s partner, is trying pressure her into starting a family and to further his cause, invites a former girl-friend who has a husband and perfect infant, for the weekend, to prove how idyllic parenthood can be, The husband turns out to be one of the commercial sponsors of the laboratory. Matters get very complex and vicious before the denouement, which is not too difficult to anticipate.
Much as I like the Oxford series, I felt this was not one of the best, being a little too contrived and dependent on coincidence.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
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