A Touch of Mortality: A Meredith and Markby Mystery (Meredith and Markby Mysteries)
Brilliant, cranky scientist Liam Caswell and his wife Sally have moved to Oxfordshire from London. Their tiny house in the village of Castle Darcy abuts that of elderly eccentric Bodicote, who keeps goats and is far from neighborly. Not far away, however, lives Sally's longtime friend Meredith Mitchell, now on leave from her London Foreign Office job (A Candle for a Corpse, 1996, etc.). Meredith, hearing rumors in the village of something amiss at her friend's cottage, arrives there to find Sally in shock but uninjured after the explosion of a letter bomb in the morning mail. Superintendent Alan Markby, Meredith's part-time lover, is put in charge of the case, which appears to be the work of animal-rights advocates opposed to Caswell's research--the basis of the book on which he's interminably working at home. There is a local animal- welfare group headed by Yvonne Goodhusband and her unkempt son Tristan, but Markby's investigation is stymied until Bodicote is found dead in his yard, seemingly by accident, and Sally, with Meredith's timely intervention, survives an attempt on her life. Unimaginative police work in this hodge-podge of a story- -burdened with an excess of goat lore, wooden dialogue, daft but dull characters, and scarcely a glimmer of suspense. A letdown from the best of the author's previous outings. --Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.