Mystery of a death in Venice
CLASSIC CRIME BARRY TURNER VENETIAN GOTHIC by Philip Gwynne Jones (Constable €10)
NATHAN SUTHERLAND brings a whole new meaning to diplomacy. As British honorary consul in Venice, with a daily routine of helping tourists find lost passports or sympathising when they are ripped off by dodgy restaurants, he also has the urge to delve into serious crime.
His latest adventure starts at the graveside of an old friend buried in the English section of the cemetery island of St Michele. Nearby, work on a neglected grave reveals a small coffin. The shock is in finding it empty.
Since the assumed occupant, a boy who drowned 40 years earlier, was British, Nathan feels bound to investigate. What follows is a riveting story of deception and corruption in high places with Nathan cast as the likely fall guy.
A chilling image of Venice in the winter shutdown is softened by Italian home cooking and copious intakes of prosecco.
THE CASE OF THE THREE LOST LETTERS by Christopher Bush (Dean Street Press €12.30)
LUDOVIC TRAVERS has it made. Living on inherited money, he owns a high-class detective agency where he has first choice of the most interesting cases.
In this adventure, a sharpnosed business man who has found religion summons three of his nearest — though not dearest — at hourly intervals to reveal why he is cutting them out of his will. But before he can get to the meaty stuff, he is smothered to death.
Since Travers had provided the victim with a bodyguard, it is in his interests to identify the killer.
As with all Christopher Bush mysteries, an intricate plot has a thick scattering of clues that are only too easy to miss. But this is all part of the fascination of keeping track of a mixed bunch of suspects, each of whom has secrets that are skilfully exposed by a master of detection.
DEATH IN ROOM FIVE by George Bellairs (Agora €12.30)
CHIEF Inspector Littlejohn is not in the normal run of Scotland Yard detectives. For one thing, he speaks excellent French; for another, he takes his holidays on the Riviera.
But there is no peace for this guardian of the law. No sooner have he and his wife settled in at their hotel than there is news of the stabbing of an
English tourist, one of a coachload of innocents abroad.
Littlejohn takes a hand in the investigation, only to find that the victim, a veteran of the French Resistance, is suspected of having betrayed his colleagues. With memories of the war still fresh, the French police are disinclined to attend to what they see as a revenge killing.
Littlejohn is not so easily persuaded. With two more murders to complicate matters, the Inspector cuts his way through a web of malice and jealousy to a surprising denouement.