Just for a twist, Peter Darwin, our hero in this one, is a career diplomat. However, his profession doesn't figure into the story heavily, except to put him on the scene through friends of friends and to give him the free time to hang around and solve the mystery. The murder victims are primarily horses and the professional career of their vet, who happens to be the fiance of the friends of friends cranky daughter. Okay, there is a people murder - seriously gruesome - but more than that would be telling.
I puzzled for a while over the title, but that, I believe, is related to Peter's secret. All the coincidental circumstances of meeting and accompanying his friend's friends take him back to the neighborhood where he lived as a child, the only son of a widowed mother, until she met and married a career diplomat who swept her off her feet and adopted her adolescent son - changing his name. So he "comes back" anonymously to his childhood turf and appears to intuit things that he has no business knowing. I could (but won't) go back and check the last few chapters, but I don't believe he ever reveals the source of his uncanny knowledge of places and people.
Good fun, as always. And he does get the girl - a much nicer one than the aforementioned cranky daughter.
No comments:
Post a Comment