Winter House by
Carol O'Connell
hbk out June 05
Published by Hutchinson
at £12.99
Another in the series about New York detective Kathy Mallory, who is
young, beautiful, ruthless and humourless.
In this one, the body of an intruder with a scissors stick in his chest turns up
in the classy Winter residence facing Central Park, notorious for having been
the scene of a mass murder some half century before, when most of a large
family were wiped out with an ice-pick. Two of the family vanished but it now
seems that one of them, Nedda Winter, has returned after spending most of
her life in institutions and confesses to having stabbed the intruder in self-
defence. Two other survivors, Cleo and Lionel and Cleo's weird daughter
Bitty also live in the house.
Kathy Mallory and her more normal partner Detective Riker investigate,
together with her friend, the genius psychiatrist Charles Butler. The plot is a
complex story, partly concerning legal shenanigans relating to the wills and
trusts of this well-heeled and dysfunctional family.
The actual story requires no more than the usual amount of suspension of
disbelief, but I found it a very easy book to put down and if I hadn't promised
to review it, I would not have slogged through to the end. It was spoilt for me
by the nature of Kathy Mallory, whom I found to be a most objectionable
person. I cannot fathom why the author created such an antipathetic lead
character, whose rudeness, arrogance and coldness made her utterly
impossible to empathise with. Even more hard to understand were the jacket
plaudits from other writers, who seemed to think that Mallory was the
greatest thing since sliced bread. If in real life she had got up to half the
illegal antics in the book, she would have been fired from NYPD on the first
day and probably ended up in jail.
Not my cup of tea, but my wife liked it, so I must be wrong!
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Winter House by
Carol O'Connell
