From Publishers Weekly
Charmian Daniels (last seen in Murder in the Garden ), chief metropolitan police superintendent of Central London, interrupts a medical leave when beautiful Vivien Charles, member of a witches' coven, is found fatally stabbed in her home, her corpse surrounded by cult objects. An autopsy reveals that Vivien was pregnant and the fetus deformed. Vivien's fellow witches, still reeling from the shock of her death, are dumbfounded by the finding, but sexy Joshua Fox, the lone male in the coven and laughingly called its warlock, is unsurprised. When Charmian learns that the primary duty of a warlock is to impregnate witches, the hapless man becomes the prime suspect--until he, too, is stabbed in his home. Every clue leads to the coven, but Charmian is unconvinced, and digs into Vivien's past to discover a more pedestrian kind of sorcery that might conjure up a killer. Melville's breezy style is less than spellbinding, but she serves up a balanced brew of career politics, the occult and the psychology of murder.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Chief Superintendent Charmian Daniels is on leave, spending time in her small house in Windsor, musing about the activities of neighbor Winifred Eagle, who owns a nasty cat at odds with Charmian's Muff and who frequently hosts what appears to be a coven of ``white'' witches centered around Caprice Dash, owner of a health-food store in town. Occasionally seen at these meetings is Vivien Charles, a newcomer, younger than the others, whose body is found one day in her underfurnished apartment, stabbed to death and surrounded by symbols of black magic. Charmian, asked for help by Detective Sergeant Dolly Barstow, spends a lot of time investigating the local ladies, but not until a second murder--as well as some exploration of Vivien's life before her arrival in the Windsor area--does she hit on the right track. A surplus of cat-chat and the author's sometimes archly mannered style are minor irritations in a cleverly constructed story, replete with red herrings and ending with a touch of dazzle. Melville's best since Windsor Red (1988). --
Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
