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A DEATH TO REMEMBER by Roger Ormerod

A DEATH TO REMEMBER

By

Pub Date: Aug. 1st, 1987
Publisher: Scribners

Ormerod's new story begins intriguingly enough with the amnesia of Cliff Summers, a government investigator recovering from a near-fatal blow outside his office building, an envelope with what might be bribe money found in his pocket. Convalescent, job gone, Cliff sets out to reconstruct the day of the attack, starting with his convicted attacker, garage-owner Tony Clayton, just released from a jail term for the offense. It turns out that Tony's wife-bookkeeper Tessa has disappeared along with stepson George, whose body later turns up in the truck of Cliff's car, left in the garage all these months. It also develops that Tessa was involved with Michael Orton, now married to Cliffs rich ex-wife Valerie. And Orton's partner--Colin Rampton--had died in a fatal accident in Clayton's garage. There are missing ledgers, statements and keys, and more violent deaths before Cliff, with help from his job successor Nicola, finds the missing links. The bumpy road to a solution here all too soon becomes a tangled, tedious web, only slightly redeemed by a zingy, surprising final twist. Some of the clarity and simplicity of The Hanging Doll Murder, the author's first and best, would have been welcome.