A VERY GOOD HATER

First US printing of a 1974 effort by the author of the outstanding procedurals Ruling Passion and A Pinch of Snuff—with Hill's talents for tricky plotting and tart characterization on modestly effective display. Yorkshire politician Bill Goldsmith, in London for a WW II regiment reunion with sleazy old chum Templewood, thinks that they've spotted the long-missing SS major who terrorized them in a POW camp. So Goldsmith trails the man, confronts him in a hotel room, and winds up tossing him out the window during a tussle! But was this man—a businessman named Housman who happens to have lived near Goldsmith's home—really the SS man? Goldsmith is now desperate to know—as he meets the man's comely widow, sleuths around, worries about his own guilt, discovers another body. And eventually he'll realize that someone has been pulling strings through this whole bewildering affair. A bit too twisty to be believed, and tetchy loner Goldsmith isn't quite appealing enough to carry the story along with him—but an unusual, cross-plotted little fabrication indeed, with more surprise turns than most novels twice its length.