Fear of Drowning
-
-
4.0 • 3 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
For years, a middle-aged, middle-of-the-road couple, Max and Amanda, had enjoyed each other's company in their modest home. With adult children, the two seemed to have everything they could want: health, some wealth and happiness. Until one day when they vanish, leaving behind no trace.
Called in for the case, Detective Inspector George Hennessey, whose own life bespeaks horrible tragedy, automatically suspects foul play. His hunch proves a keen one when the bodies of the missing couple turn up in a shallow grave. But this macabre discovery is only the beginning of a case that will test the mettle of the entire police force. For one thing, no murderer would have killed them for their money since the couple had lost a small fortune right before their death. For another, the couple, apparently unbeknownst to the other, had been involved in illicit liaisons. For some reason, their only son has been acting strangely and to top these off, in the midst of the fracas a family secret arises.
In search of a road to answers, Hennessey instead finds a maze littered with conflicting clues and misinformation. And instead of lacking any suspects at all, the detective finds there are all too many people who had wished the deceased couple harm.
A compelling and grittily authentic novel from the author of the acclaimed P Division series.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"There's nowt so queer as folk," Sergeant Yellich tells his boss, Chief Inspector George Hennessey of the City of York Police, near the start of this gripping police procedural, the first in a projected series from this polished British author (The Man with No Face, etc.). "That's a gem of Yorkshire wisdom, is it?" replies Hennessey, who will shortly find himself preoccupied with the peculiarities of human behavior while investigating a double murder. Max and Amanda Williams, a respectable middle-aged couple, are missing, days after dining out with their grown children, Rufus and Nicola. Their cottage in the village of Bramley on Ouse stands spotlessly empty, almost too clean. Then a local countryman happens across a shallow grave containing two bodies with fatal head wounds; Rufus identifies them, more in anger than in sorrow, as those of his parents. A pair of suspects comes to the fore: Tim Sheringham, a health-club proprietor who was having an affair with Amanda and had just broken it off, and Michael Richardson, an Irish builder who was facing ruin because Max owed him a huge sum. The devil-may-care Max, while outwardly prosperous, was broke; indeed, as Hennessey and Yellich eventually discover, the man managed to squander a fortune inherited from a brother who mysteriously drowned in his bathtub ten years earlier. Though the killer's identity becomes obvious before the climax, Turnbull closes on a quietly chilling scene of confession, the perfect end to a subtle novel rich in character, as well as in Yorkshire wit and wisdom.
