Cop Out

by Claire McNab

Overview

A family business turns deadly…



Bryce Darcy, partner is a highly successful family business, has been brutally murdered. Charlotte Darcy, sister to the victim, has confessed. Open and shut case, Detective Inspector Carol Ashton is informed. Not so, argues Carol’s aunt, friend to the Darcy family. She contends that Charlotte is mentally incompetent.



Carol reopens the investigation. Bus she is in personal crisis, close to burnout. Sick of the patriarchal framework of police work, sick of hiding her real lesbian self for the sake of her career.



Carol’s lover is not much help—Sybil has found her own direction in a dynamic women’s group. And the loyal Detective Sergeant Mark Bourke is distracted by his interest in the career of a promising female constable new to homicide.



Amid her own predicament, Carol finds herself embroiled in a family at war. She discovers that the dead man was a member of a support group for married gay men. And that the Darcy family, blessed with fame and fortune, seethes with secrets: ambiguous parentage, a disgraceful family swindle, fraud, infidelity, attempted drug poisoning. And among the warring Darcys is a pitiless murderer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781931513296
Publisher:	Bella Books
Publication date:	08/01/2003
Series:	Carol Ashton Series , #4
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Claire McNab has written over 50 books and is known in her native Australia for crime fiction, children’s novels, picture books, self-help, and English textbooks. Her first mystery, Lessons in Murder, was published in the U.S. in 1988. Now a Los Angeles resident, she teaches not-yet-published writers through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. She is the author of three lesbian mystery series featuring Inspector Carol Ashton, Agent Denise Cleever and Detective Kylie Kendall.



She has served as the president of Sisters in Crime and is a member of both the Mystery Writers of America and the Science Fiction Writers of America. She lives in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

When Bryce Darcy is bludgeoned to death, his sister Charlotte is found with the body and the murder weapon, possessed of a convenient case of amnesia. To Detective Inspector Carol Ashton, it all seems a bit too tidy. Such instincts have served Ashton well during her rise through the male-dominated Sydney police force--as has her decision to keep her life with her lover, Sybil, a secret. Ashton soon discovers her prime suspect: Charlotte's nasty husband Eric, who has been feeding his wife drugs to have her declared incompetent, gain control of her money and marry his mistress. But then Ashton suspects that Bryce may have been killed to prevent him from revealing financial shenanigans within the family-owned company. When she learns that Bryce had sought counseling for his own covert homosexuality, she wonders: Would his tough-as-nails wife prefer widowhood to being cast aside? Smooth writing by McNab ( Lessons in Murder ) lends plausibility to the ultimate solution. Although gay concerns are woven firmly and, for the most part, effectively into this procedural, the action lags while Ashton muses over career burnout and begins, tentatively, to step out of the closet. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

As she labors on a case of possible fratricide, Australian Detective Inspector Carol Ashton ( Death Down Under , Naiad Pr., 1990) faces some truths about her own mostly closeted sexuality. Police find designer Charlotte Darcy beside the battered body of her accountant brother, bloody hammer at hand, but their parents, owners of the fabulously successful family business, conveniently arrive with a psychiatrist. Ashton and colleagues refuse to accept the obvious, needless to say, so repeated interrogations ensue. McNab presents a basically straightforward, nicely done plot without much complication. Not as deep or practiced as Sandra Scoppettone's Everything You Have Is Mine (LJ 4/1/91), but certainly worth a read.

Library Journal