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ROAST EGGS by Douglas Clark

ROAST EGGS

By

Pub Date: Sept. 28th, 1981
Publisher: Dodd, Mead

Another small-scale case for Masters and Green of Scotland Yard (Premedicated Murder, etc.)--though they aren't called in till after a gripping prologue: we watch as Angels Connal, secretly fearful of husband James (who runs her family company), changes her will, begins divorce proceedings, finds evidence of James' adultery. . . and then dies in a foul-play fire. Unsurprisingly, then, James is put on trial for murder, but it looks as if (with a neat alibi) he's about to be acquitted. So the Scotland Yard-ers are brought in to figure out--over one weekend--just why and how James did it. . . and how to nail him. The result is a rather talky dissection of motives and evidence (James intended to be tried as part of a mad scheme to get control of his wife's company), with a courtroom-drama finale in which psycho James, rather implausibly, goes gags when confronted with a speck of evidence against him. Still, an intriguing little puzzle--with some echoes of Christie--for fans of old-fashioned pure deduction.