DEATH DANCE

A case he can’t seem to solve threatens to derail a British detective’s long-awaited nuptials.

The road to wedlock hasn’t been easy for Elmhurst’s DI Joe Rafferty (All the Lonely People, 2009, etc.). He’s been drawn to Abra Anne Kearny ever since his straight-arrow partner Dafyd Llewellyn introduced him to his free-spirited cousin. But quarrels over wedding expenses led the pair to a separation, patched up only with great effort. Now, St. Boniface Catholic Church has been booked, a nonrefundable honeymoon’s been paid for and Rafferty is almost finished with his wedding speech. But Adrienne Staveley’s murder stands between him and marital bliss. Not that there aren’t plenty of suspects who might have done in the perfidious Ms. Staveley, starting with her out-of-work husband, who pounds the pavement each day while his wife entertains a string of lovers. Then there are her latest gentleman callers: smarmy car salesman Gary Oldfield, self-employed electrician Michael Peacock, even her brother-in-law David Ayling. And Staveley’s teenaged son Kyle certainly hates his stepmother enough to have strangled her. Rafferty interviews and re-interviews each suspect without turning up enough evidence to charge anyone. Superintendent Bradley leans on him to close the case quickly, but as the Big Day draws near, his boss’s ire can’t match Joe’s own angst over the possibility of postponing it because of an unsolved case.

As Rafferty tills the same ground over and over, Evans trudges toward a huge anticlimax that will to satisfy neither mystery-lovers nor romance buffs.