Jack Pertwee es feliz. Está a punto de casarse con la mujer que ama y su mejor amigo, Charlie Hatton, será el padrino de boda. Pero un inesperado incidente enturbia sus idílicos planes: a la mañana siguiente de la despedida de soltero, encuentran el cadáver de Charlie. Existen numerosos sospechosos, pues la víctima, un camionero que se sacaba un sueldo extra trapicheando ilegalmente con mercancías, siempre alardeaba de su buena posición económica. ¿Pero serían realmente capaces de matarle sus envidiosos compañeros? Wexford no está muy seguro. Cree más acertado relacionar este caso con un accidente de tráfico en la carretera que solía transitar Charlie y en el que perdieron la vida dos personas... Tal vez el joven asesinado presenció algo y no hubo más remedio que quitarle de en medio.

Delightful -- for a murder mystery. The characters were delightfully cliché but that was what made them likeable. I look forward to reading the next one. ( )

Charlie Hatton is to be best man at Jack Pertwee’s wedding tomorrow. Tonight they get together with some of Jack’s other friends at the Dragon for the traditional stag party. At closing they all leave for home. Jack and Charlie walk to the Kingsbrook Bridge, where they each went their separate ways. That was the last time Charlie was seen alive.

Then there is the Fanshaw car wreck. Mr., Mrs. And daughter were on the way home when something happened and the car overturned and caught fire. The Mrs. Was thrown free and wound up in the hospital. What was the reason for the accident?

Interesting to note, Charlie’s body was found with a wad of cash in his pocket and he was sporting a set of dentures that set him back quite a bit. Also he lived with his wife in a nicely furnished place and she wore some costly clothes. How did they manage that on a lorry driver’s wage?

These two cases are just the start. Chief Inspector Wexford and his cheerless assistant, Burden, must unravel the twisting and turning threads to make sense of what happened and if there are any relationships between the two cases. ( )

I just don't enjoy these Wexford novels as much as the stand alone ones. I'm not sure if it's that they're now dated or Rendell was learning her craft. ( )

What a nice surprise. This was a series I'd started, then stopped for reasons I've already written about and won't go into again. Don't know what prompted me to pick it up again except that I suspected that she would get better. And she does.

Wexford is an interesting twist to the kind of inspector I usually read. He's competent, successfully married, adjusted. He's a bit grumpy, but generally likable. My complaints really had to do with the quality of the plots, sorta important, but lacking in the first three books. This one read more like an Agatha Christie novel, an English cozy but in the crime genre. Gather a group of people, kill one off, and have the detective figure it out. Straightforward, and this one is no groundbreaking novel, but it was fun. It had sufficient information that the reader could figure it out ( I did ) but enough interesting things going on that if you figured it out, you still wanted to see how it turned out.

All in all, a good read from an author that had previously thrilled and disappointed me. Perhaps she has righted the ship for good. ( )