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In this C. D. Sloan Mystery by CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird, a body is found in the river-but the victim didn't drown. When local fisherman Horace Boller decided to row his boat out on the tidal backwash of the river one morning, he couldn't have meant to land a catch like this. What he ended up with was a body floating on the river's surface. And judging by the state of the corpse, the death was not a recent one. The strange thing is, the coroner report indicates that drowning was not the cause of death. It's up to the intrepid C. D. Sloan-and his markedly less intrepid assistant, Constable Crosby-to investigate. Along the way, Calleshire's most successful pair of puzzle-solving policemen will contend with a handful of additional strange deaths, befuddling municipal building codes, an antiquarian with interesting views on local history, and a fisherman who has his own motivation for helping (or perhaps hindering) the investigation. Can C. D. Sloan get to the bottom of this waterlogged killing?… (more)
User reviews
"The man wasn't alive and well and living in Paris." In fact, he wasn't alive at all. He was floating face down in the river.
I enjoyed the book. It was one of her funniest ones yet. But I did guess the murderer and the motive
In the small village of Edsway, a local man out in his boat on the river sees a body floating. The police, naturally, are called in to investigate, and the pathologist, Dr. Dabbe, determines that the man wasn't drowned after all. But trying to figure out not only who he was and what happened to him is the least of Sloan's problems -- murder, it seems, is still afoot.
As noted, much better flow in the mystery and its denouement. I would most definitely recommend this one both to British mystery readers and those who read police procedurals. If you're considering trying Catherine Aird's books, start with number one and work your way through -- you'll miss a great deal as far as character development goes if you do not.
If you're not familiar with British English, you may want to read this with access to an OED! But Aird does a great job of capturing English country life and character wrapped in clever little mysteries.
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Fic Mystery Aird |