Despite naps, aperitifs and sarcasm coming at him from all quarters, Inspector Alvarez brings criminality to its knees, along with the Mallorcan justice system.
After a pair of young lovers are run down on a curve leading to the baronial Kent estate of Cyril Tyler, Mr. Tyler and his dented Bentley hightail it through the Chunnel and over to Mallorca. Inspector Enrique Alvarez is called on to identify the man, inspect his car and report his findings to his browbeating supervisor, Superior Chief Salas, who will alert the Brits. But Tyler complicates matters by getting shot twice in the gut in his Mallorcan villa, and that case falls in Alvarez’s lap too. The loathed Tyler offended many husbands by bedding their wives, treated his help with disdain and lived as if only his needs mattered. The suspects include two English couples who stormed in and out of Tyler’s house that fateful day and a certain deliciously sexy married Frenchwoman who came and went as she pleased. Amid siestas, home-cooked meals and sips from the bottle in his desk drawer, Salas’s harassed underling manages to connect the dots, discount an alibi, disprove a confession and resolve matters in keeping with his personal moral code.
One of the better Alvarez cases, proving that even after 30-plus escapades (An Instinctive Solution, 2008, etc.), Jeffries and his laid-back sleuth can make you long for a Mallorcan holiday.
