The Marriage Hearse by
Kate Ellis
hbk out March 06
Published by Piatkus
at £18.99
Kate Ellis writes a series based in Devon's 'Tradmouth', a thinly-
disguised Dartmouth, complete with naval college and nearby 'Morbay',
which must be Torbay.
Her central character is DI Wesley Petersen, a Jamaican policeman,
whose very white boss is DCI Gerry Heffernan. They are faced with the
murder of a bride on her wedding morning, killed at home when all the
family and guests are waiting at the church. The girl, Kirsten Harbourn,
turns out to be not quite so pure as people imagined and a complex plot
developes involving her family and a language school in Morbay where a
scam is going on. A parallel plot, similar to one which the author seems
to manage in other books, is the discovery of a skeleton in a local farm,
which turns out to be linked to an Elizabethan playwright whose hitherto
lost play is being performed that very week.
The author keeps all the balls in the air very proficiently. The writing is
smooth and story-line believable, in spite of the complexity of the plot.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
; width=){kind=small}
The Marriage Hearse by
Kate Ellis
