A GOOD WALK SPOILED

A company golf outing turns nasty when the director of research and development ends dinner by keeling over dead.

Richard Cullis is not the most popular department head at Gloucester Chemicals. Jason Dimmock detests him for his affair with Jason’s wife Lucy. Deborah Young resents him for getting the promotion she deserved. Her husband Paul is angry because, after luring him out of research into an ill-fitting sales position, Cullis gave Paul the sack. Ben Paddon, a covert member of All God’s Creatures, despises Cullis for testing products on animals. Priscilla Godwin has abhorred Cullis ever since their date ended with his brutal refusal to accept the fact that her “No” really meant “No.” And his wife echoes his employees’ loathing, though she doesn’t even work for Gloucester Chemicals. So why do all his detractors agree to join him in a company golf tournament, even when most of them agree—although they can’t remember the attribution (Wilde? Twain?)—that the game is nothing but a good walk spoiled? It’s up to Chief Supt. John Lambert and Sgt. Bert Hook (Close Call, 2006, etc.) to find out, since someone hated Cullis enough to slip a dose of deadly poison into his dessert.

All the interest is in seeing Lambert and Hook turn the suspects against one another in this routine procedural, which ends with one of the shortest putts on record.