AN INSTINCTIVE SOLUTION

Good food, plenty of brandy and a nice nap are the foundation of Mallorca’s Inspector Enrique Alvarez’s investigative technique.

Inspector Alvarez, of Mallorca’s Cuerpo General de Policia, has three problems: withstanding the sarcasm of Superior Chief Salas; bearing up under the browbeating of his cousin and cook Dolores; and finding out who shot Señora Heron, an English ex-pat virago, in the thigh and then in the head. Her husband, a gentle soul who deserved far better than her and was finding it in the arms of the widow Rowley, was about to be excised from her life-insurance policy. The private eye she’d hired to tail him was accusing of padding the bills. Her gardener was stealing her garlic seedlings to resell for personal profit. The rest of her staff loathed her for her imperious demands. And a burglar who tinkered with the house shutters for entry and lifted valuable electronics may have returned and fiddled with her private safe. Mulling over this and that, with time out for lunch, cafe-stops and restorative siestas, Alvarez waits until his instincts lead him to a sound if not quite ethical solution.

A few hours with the classic drollery and tomfoolery of Jeffries (Murder Needs Imagination, 2007, etc.) will make your synapses smile.