From Publishers Weekly
High-ranking English policewoman Charmian Daniels hopes to escape some of the pressures of her job in her newly purchased weekend cottage but finds murder and personal conflict follow her even to the village of Brideswell. There the social-climbing lover of a friend asks Charmian for help in a case in which he might be implicated. The police are looking for Chloe Devon, a young woman who disappeared the week before, right after she and the social climber had quarreled in a local restaurant. Charmian becomes more seriously involved when the young woman's torso is found buried in Brideswell's woods. Although she is not directly in charge, Charmian starts her own investigation, noting that the village has suffered a number of mysterious deaths in the recent past. At the same time, her relationship with her aristocratic lover Humphrey Kent deteriorates and she becomes attracted to the police officer in charge of the case. With fine-edged brushstrokes, Melville ( Footsteps in the Blood ) chronicles the intelligent, ambitious Charmian's continuing rise up the police ladder of success.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
British policewoman Charmian Daniels has reached a high rank in her Windsor-based unit (Windsor Red, 1988, etc.). Wealthy Humphrey Kent wants to marry her, but Charmian chooses to distance herself with the purchase of an old house in nearby Brideswell. It was owned by the late Lady Beatrice Armitage, an aunt of Charmian's close friend Mary Erskine. When Chloe Devon, secretary to Mary's wealthy suitor Billy Damiani, disappears one night from Brideswell's main street--her dismembered body parts later turning up in several places--Charmian finds herself unofficially investigating the murder. Officially in the hands of attractive Chief Superintendent Clive Barney, the case is soon complicated by the murder of longtime resident Thomas Dryden, found by Charmian mutilated and dying in the village churchyard. Secrets past and present abound in Brideswell, one of them in the house next to Charmian's, but it's in an unlikely corner that she finds the key to the puzzle. Several psychics wander in and out of a plot spun in cryptic prose that tends to flatten suspense, A mildly engrossing midlevel entry in this series of offbeat procedurals. --
Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
