A Day for Dying (Inspector Luke Thanet Series #13)

by Dorothy Simpson

Overview

When playboy Max Jeopard is killed at his own engagement party, Inspector Luke Thanet is called in to investigate and uncovers a host of suspects, including his fiancée, a jealous brother, an ex-girlfriend, and the victim’s future in-laws. “This English village ‘cozy’ goes down well” (Library Journal).

“A master at plot manipulation, Ms. Simpson cunningly strews clues right and left...The pleasure here is watching Thanet meticulously pick his way through ‘the complex web of relationships’ to arrive at an understanding of what would make a person kill for love.” —The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501153761
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	05/21/2016
Series:	Inspector Luke Thanet Series , #13
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Dorothy Simpson was born in South Wales and went to Bristol University, where she studied languages before moving to Kent, the setting for her Inspector Thanet mystery novels. She is the winner of a Silver Dagger Award from the Crime Writers’ Association of Great Britain.

Editorial Reviews

In his 13th appearance, following No Laughing Matter, Inspector Luke Thanet has ample opportunity to display the sympathetic and acute investigative technique that has earned a Silver Dagger award for the author of this British series. Dead is Max Jeopard, a handsome, outwardly charming playboy and travel writer found floating in the swimming pool at his own engagement party. Among the family and guests at the impressive family home of his fiance, Tess Sylvester, Thanet finds many with both motive and opportunity for murder. Among them are the victim's brother Hartley, who was Tess's former boyfriend, and Anthea Greenway, who was dropped by Max when he took up with Tess. There's Tess herself, whose relationship with Max was volatile; her parents, each with reason to lament the prospect of Max as a son-in-law; Tess's schizophrenic brother, who escaped the watch of his nurse at the same time Max disappeared; and Gerald Argent, the man whom Tess spurned for Max. Thanet's deft probing reveals an increasingly ugly portrait of the victim and uncovers more than one secret and more than one crime in the lives, loves and tangled loyalties of the suspects. This is a solid, if unexceptional, offering from Simpson. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Inspector Luke Thanet and Sergeant Mike Lineham head the investigation into the apparent murder of Max Jeopard, a handsome but manipulative scion of a wealthy family. The disparity between a policeman's wage and the showy affluence of Jeopard's Tudor mansion gives rise to trenchant observation as Thanet and Lineham interrogate the usual suspects-spurned lover, jealous ex-boyfriend, disapproving father-with practiced adroitness, piecing together a picture of events. Simpson (No Laughing Matter, Scribner, 1993) is very good at dialog and characterization, so this English village "cozy" goes down quite well.

Library Journal

Sturrenden's Inspector Luke Thanet and his ever supportive Sergeant Mike Lineham are again investigating a murder in the upper-middle-class environs of town (No Laughing Matter, 1993, etc.). The victim is travel-writer-playboy Max Jeopard, who's found dead, fully clothed, in the swimming pool of hosts Ralph and Marion Sylvester, during a party celebrating Max's engagement to their daughter Tess. Max and Tess have had a stormy, off-on relationship, and the party itself seems to have been less than celebratory—with Max having been slapped by ex-girlfriend Anthea and snubbed by Tess's ex-fiancé Gerald Argent, and with the Sylvesters' schizophrenic son Carey having escaped briefly from the care of his nurse Michael Roper. Thanet spots something strange, too, in the relationship of the Sylvesters to their bejewelled, BMW-owning housekeeper Barbara Mallis. The key to it all lies in Max's monumentally selfish, charismatic persona, and Thanet, in one of his intuitive flashes, dredges up a bit of overlooked (but not by the alert reader) evidence and almost reluctantly nails down the culprit.

This time out, a rather subdued Thanet goes through his civilized paces, here dealing compassionately with a very contemporary dilemma and adding a thoughtful, readable, slightly tepid case history to the author's respected body of work.

Kirkus Reviews