A RECONSTRUCTED CORPSE

by Simon Brett ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 6, 1994

Finally, a role within Charles Paris's limited histrionic range: missing, presumed dead, in the character of Martin Earnshaw, a small-time property developer who got in too deep to a loan shark, stepped out one night for a drink, and never came back. Sleazy TV producer Bob Garston, ever alert for the audience's lowest instincts, hires Charles as an extra to impersonate Earnshaw in reconstructed scenes from the last hours of his life for Public Enemies, his true-crime show. Meantime, another sort of reconstruction -- spurred perhaps by the rivalry between glamorous, amorous police consultant Sam Noakes and private investigator Ted Faraday, her current lover -- gets underway when arms and legs that might have been Earnshaw's begin turning up just in time to make the weekly TV broadcasts. One evening after taping, Charles absent-mindedly follows Noakes's former lover Sergeant Greg Marchmont to a suspicious flat in Brighton -- and right into the eye of the storm. Pleasantly urbane as ever, though Charles (Corporate Bodies, 1992, etc.) is unwontedly subdued and the mystery pretty transparent.

Pub Date: June 6, 1994

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 189

Publisher: Scribners

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1994

Categories: FICTION