is body in ice house the disappeared husband of 10 years ago?

S & I are arguing about how this book ended up in our house at all. I think he ordered it from the library and he insists it must have been me. Whatever. It was a really good read regardless.

Three women, Phoebe Maybury, Diana Thomson and Anne Cattrell, are the residents of Streech Grange, and are under suspicion for murder. Again. Ten years ago, Phoebe's husband David disappeared conveniently into thin air but there was neither a body nor any other evidence to connect Phoebe to his murder. Now, a disgusting, decomposing, unidentifiably ravaged dead body has turned up in the ice house. Could it possibly be David Maybury? Chief Inspector Walsh is thrilled at the prospect of finally solving his first ever case. Sergeant McLoughlin is simply trying to get through the investigation without losing his temper and the (mostly liquid) contents of his stomach. The "three lesbians", though, are tougher and more canny opponents than either of them imagine.

I loved the characters. They're complex, each one of them, and in possession of human dignity usually denied to most fictional characters - especially the ones the writer finds politically, morally or socially questionable. No such discrimination in this book.

I also loved the story's up-to-date-cosy sensibility. It's a rural English murder mystery, but we have cell phones and internet and feminism and all that jazz. Good to see a genre like this one keeping up with the times. (Though, since I don't read mysteries that often, I might be giving this book too much credit for something that may be standard fare these days. Please enlighten me if that's the case.)

The plot is meaty and juicy and other carnivorous-sounding adjectives as well. Also it has the requisite twists, though none that will actually blow your stockings off. Maybe enough to make a couple of ladders spontaneously appear. Adequate.

What I found questionable was the personality transplant one of the main characters got about halfway through the novel, apparantly SOLELY for the purpose of turning that character into a believable love interest for another main character. Nah, not buying it. And I despair at YET another romance that begins with the couple just drop dead hating each other at first sight.

Much more problematic is the use of omniscient 3rd person POV. This author hops from one character's head to another's within the space of single, unbroken paragraphs, and inserts statements that are clearly the *authorial* voice in addition, so that very often I was confused about what was going on. For example, take the sentence:

"He hung on to her every word adoringly."

This could mean very different things depending on who is thinking it. If the author is telling me this, I will take it as a simple statement of fact: the guy is smitten. If this is the woman's observation, I'll take it with a slight pinch of salt, because no person is a perfectly accurate judge of what's going on in another person's head. If the man is telling me this, I'll take it with a huge pinch of salt because he has been shown to be deliberately deceptive in the past.

The context and placement of this sentence gave me no way of knowing from whose point of view it was written. And there are many more such instances throughout the book, which made for a somewhat confusing read at times, until I stopped letting it bug me too much.
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Ein grausamer Mord an einem Mann steht im Mittelpunkt des ersten Romans von Minette Walters. Auf einem englischen Landsitz, den drei allein lebende Frauen bewohnen, wird die übel zugerichtete Leiche eines Mannes gefunden und die Gerüchteküche fängt an zu brodeln, weiß man doch, daß der Hausherr vor etlichen Jahren spurlos verschwunden ist. Den skeptischen Dorfbewohnern waren die drei Frauen schon immer suspekt und nur zu gerne würden sie ihnen den Mord in die Schuhe schieben. Minette Walters hat in ihrem Erstling einige überraschende Wendungen im Handlungsverlauf eingebaut. Der Leser wird auf eine Vielfalt falscher Fährten gelockt, bis endlich ganz am Schluß der Fall mit einigen überraschenden Erkenntnissen geklärt wird. Fans von Psychothrillern, sollten sich den Namen Minette Walters merken. Sie wird, nachdem sie für ihren ersten Roman bereits von der Crime Writers Association mit "Bester Krimi-Erstling des Jahres" ausgezeichnet wurde, sicher noch einige spektakuläre Morde in der Schreibtischschublade bereit halten. --Manuela Haselberger

I first read this in 1999, long enough ago to have forgotten the important bits so it was like reading it for the first time. The action kept up a steady pace and the characters were well-rounded and realistic. I felt empathy for the 3 women, isolated and victimized by the past. It's going back on the shelf to await my next visit to Streech Grange. ( )

I finally finished! It took a lot of work and determination to get through, but the story finallly ended. Walters worked so hard to create plot twists and turns throughout the novel, that she lost sight of the story. It's a shame because her characters were interesting. She eventually found her way because the ending of her story was well-written. The beginning and the middle were not worth the read, though.
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