SLEEPING PARTNER
by William Paul
A third chapter in the life of Edinburgh's hormone-driven Detective Chief Inspector David Fyfe, here involved with the murder of respectable, church-going widow Zena McElhose. Zena's been found dead on her kitchen floor, apparently killed by the mallet still clutched in the hand of a man lying, near death, inside the front door, his own head encased in a balaclava helmet. The old woman's body was discovered by her tenant Marianne Dunne, now living in a small house behind Zena's with her burly common-law husband Sandy Ramensky and their three-year-old daughter Lorna, who is dying of leukemia. The man in the helmet, felled by a heart attack, turns out to be a lawyer, Valentine Randolph, indulging in his favorite sport—larceny—while his longtime secretary—another nutcase—is acting out her doomed fantasies in the background. Then there's Fyfe himself, playing with fire as he tries to balance his reconciliation with ex-wife Sally, his attraction to newly met Hilary, and a rendezvous with old flame and partner-in-crime Angela, all this time trying to make sense out of Sandy Ramensky's drunken, metaphysical rantings: Is he the one guilty of Zena's murder or not? In the end, it's Chief Constable Sir Duncan who unveils the murderer in this pretentious procedural: overwritten, laden with psychobabble, and a disappointment after the author's well-received Sleeping Pretty (1996).