PAST MISCHIEF

by Clare Curzon ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 13, 1996

Thames Valley CID Superintendent Mike Yeadings (Nice People, 1995, etc.) has an almost peripheral share of this new case in which Detective Rosemary Zyczynski plays a major role. A man, shot to death and stripped of identification, has been found, after hours, in the office of Miranda Gregory, a sleek, ambitious executive with Matherson and Corby, a special-events planning company. The next day Miranda is found unconscious, seemingly the victim of a hit-and-run driver. While she remains in a deep coma, a search of her apartment turns up the fact that her real name is Annie Lodd, legally changed, and it appears she'd been adopted twice. Further investigation reveals the intriguing fact that Miranda's predecessor in her job was her second adoptive mother, Gwen Lodd, now retired. The office victim is finally identified as a private detective, mission unknown. A second corpse surfaces when Yeadings's men trace Miranda's adoptive father Peter and find him dead--a suicide by overdose. Then there's TV producer Rodney Fairburn, a half-brother, who shows up at the hospital; a bloody knife found in Peter Lodd's flat; and rumors of Miranda's shadowy connection to parliamentary junior minister Feaist-Rivers. With its hints of byzantine plots, an overextended cast of characters, and the harrowing flashbacks suffered by a comatose Miranda, the windup is a tad underclimactic. Still, Curzon does the British procedural better than most, and her 16th novel is no exception.

Pub Date: May 13, 1996

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996

Categories: FICTION