MURDER CONFOUNDED

Sixteenth in this easy-to-take series featuring Majorcan Police Inspector Enrique Alvarez (Murder's Long Memory, etc.) and his long-running battles with food, drink, and Superior Chief Salas. When Englishman Franklin Gore is hospitalized with injuries suffered in what he insists was a household accident, Alvarez sees a clear case of assault and torture. An attack in Gore's garden on Peeping Tom Vicente Otero deepens a puzzle that's further complicated when Alvarez identifies Gore's frequent lady visitor as Vivien, much younger wife of very rich Sir Donald Macadie, an English expatriate retired to the island. Vivien's explanation of her relationship with Gore sends Alvarez to England, where he verifies Gore's connection to undercover work with terrorists. What he finds back in Majorca puts all the island's security forces on alert—until matters fizzle to an ironic anticlimax. Not on the level of Jeffries's best, but Alvarez retains his gentle charm (fans might wish the author would give him a life), and his latest outing provides an affable diversion.