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BURY HIM KINDLY by Pat Burden

BURY HIM KINDLY

By

Pub Date: April 8th, 1992
Publisher: Doubleday

Retired Detective Chief Superintendent Henry Bassett (Wreath of Honesty, Screaming Bones) again chats up the neighbors, the shopkeepers, the regulars at the pub, the busybodies and the recluses as he tries to reason out why someone is trying to frame the antisocial Alice and her simpleton son Robby for the murder of social worker Philip Read--whose abandoned car was found in a lay-by near their property and whose body was tidily buried right on it. And why, after all these years, is the awful truth about Robby's dad (a murderer, the rumor has it) suddenly surfacing? As Baasett gently pokes and prods Bletch Heath village newcomer Kathy McDonald, Read's social-worker widow Eileen, and concerned sisters Annette and Olivia, he discovers a vital clue at the Bring and Buy Sale and unravels a carefully composed alibi--to reveal yet another family secret and the name of the poor, unstable murderer. Genteel, cozy, but perhaps a shade too understated. In this third outing, widower Bassett, always engaging, is a trifle constrained by all that listening he has to do; next time, more action, please.