Death Duties by
Phil Lovesey
pbk out March 99
(HarperCollins)
at £5.99
A seven year old girl admits to the killing of her father. He was a vet and had shown her how he uses his syringe to inject animals. She uses the needle on him, she tells the police, because he was ill and she wanted him to wake up in heaven. She grows up and kills again and again. To the police the murders lack motive, to the murderer they afford the victims a release from the pressures of life: she is sending them to heaven. But her killing of an old lady, Ida Scharansky of Nightingale Road, Chelmsford, proves to be her undoing. Another murder follows shortly after, deemed necessary by the killer because the police have arrested a reformed villain, Doug Jenkins, and she is anxious to show that they have the wrong man. This time the victim is a young foreign student who fights desperately for her life before being overcome. The killer is surprised by such resistance because she acts always from the highest motives. Her aim is to release her clients - she would not consider them victims - from the intolerable burden of life so that they may find eternal happiness in death.
Two policemen and a WPC dealt with the murder of the vet. Of the three only one has remained in the force, DCI Frank Davies. The WPC is now Mrs Ruth Jenkins, wife of Doug; the young DC, Felix Pengelly, resigned after a confrontation with a young thug with a gun which thoroughly un-nerved him and subjected him to panic attacks. It is these three who eventually and quite plausibly, make the connection with the young girl of thirty years before and the death of the vet. The search is on then to find her.
Phil Lovesey is the son of Peter Lovesey and he has clearly inherited the considerable plotting skills of his father. The ramifications of the plot are so cleverly handled that Ruth is even suspected as the murderer because her handkerchief is found at the scene of one of the crimes. It is all managed very convincingly and builds up to a chilling climax. The characters are, however, only lightly sketched in because the author switches viewpoint from one to another. Nevertheless this is an absorbing first novel which forces the reader to keep turning the pages.
Death Duties by
Phil Lovesey