PAST REASON HATED

Brand-new Detective Constant Susan Gay rousts Yorkshire Chief Inspector Alan Banks (The Hanging Valley, etc.) from a wedding party for departing Sgt. Jim Hatchley to examine the body of Caroline Hartley, a woman whose disastrous family life—she ran away from home as soon as she could and ended up working the streets of Soho—and open sexuality—despite her lesbianism, she continued to flirt with men—multiply potential motives for her murder. But all the while he's questioning Caroline's present and former lovers, her fellow-actors in an amateur production of Twelfth Night, and the brother she left behind to take care of her bedridden father, Banks feels certain that the key to her death is a Vivaldi choral work left playing on her phonograph. The final revelation, unfortunately, isn't up to what comes before: a steady, cleareyed revelation of Caroline's personality, combined with piercing insight into an unusually generous circle of suspects.