Candles for the Dead (Constable Crime) Book

Detective Chief Inspector Neil Paget returns for a third tale of murder in rural England. In Candles for The Dead, Bank worker Beth Smallwood is found battered to death with a candlestick at a church altar. Paget's investigation reveals a number of suspects, all with the motive and the means: her son Lenny, for whom she had been embezzling money; Beth's boss, Mr Gresham, who brutally raped her prior to her death; and Harry Beecham, the colleague made redundant by Beth's promotion. Current vogue with this genre is to have the detective be a maelstrom of emotional crises and neuroses, with the mystery taking a back seat. So, it is vastly refreshing to have Frank Smith present us with a good old-fashioned labyrinthine whodunit. True, Paget has to deal with the anniversary of his wife's death and the re-emergence of an old flame, but they never intrude on his no-nonsense approach to the crime. Smith gives us plenty of twists before the final curtain and never lets up on the pace. This may be a by-the-numbers affair, but sometimes that's all you want. Smith delivers a competent tale of the British procedural and certainly one that will appeal from the rabid crime fan to the casual reader. --Danny GraydonRead More