Where
Petals Fall
A
Jill Kennedy and DCI Max Trentham Mystery
Shirley
Wells
Soho
Constable (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-56947-572-5 (1569475725)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-572-0 (9781569475720)
Publication Date: May 2009
List Price: $25.00
Synopsis (from
the publisher): When two young boys find a woman’s body in a
quarry, Jill Kennedy and DCI Max Trentham experience a definite feeling
of déjà vu.
Five years earlier, four women were found murdered in exactly the same
way. Weirdly the bodies had each been discovered wrapped in a shroud
– so the killer was soon dubbed "The Undertaker".
Following Jill’s profiling the police tried to arrest a loner
called Edward Marshall, but the man had fled and, after a high-speed
car chase, lost control and went over a cliff. His car was found but
his body never was.
Now there are three possibilities: Marshall somehow survived the plunge
into the sea; Marshall was innocent and the real killer is back
– or a copycat is at work. It is up to Jill and Max to work
out whether a terrible mistake was made by the police five years ago
... or whether the original murderer had an apprentice waiting in the
wings.
Review:
Forensic psychologist Jill Kennedy and DCI Max Trentham are shouldering
more than their fair share of collective guilt. She is on stress leave,
worry-ridden whether she made the right call in an earlier case where a
suicide “wrongly accused, hanged himself” and
wondering what it will be like to return to work shortly. Her own
husband was a cop killed in a street shoot-out. Trentham
hasn’t fared too well either, what with his superiors
constantly nagging him, a mole in his squad room leaking information to
the press, and himself a widower with two boys to raise and Jill to
deal with both as a colleague and a lover. Now, they are haunted by the
vicious death of a young woman that leads them to believe a serial
killer may have returned from the dead. Part British police procedural
and part psychological thriller, Wells’ Where Petals Fall
is total entertainment.
What Jill and Max quickly discover is that 38-year-old floral designer,
Carol Blakeley, has been murdered and her body left in Lee Quarry where
two lads find it. The MO for the killing is identical to that of an
alleged serial killer’s five years earlier when four other
young married women had their throats slashed, their bodies wrapped in
a white undertaker’s shroud, and their wedding rings threaded
onto red ribbons tied around their midriffs. The earlier case was
closed when the suspect was killed while fleeing the police, but his
body was never found in the car that plunged into the sea. Now, the
Kennedy-Trentham duo have to set aside Jill’s demons and
their own domestic upsets to concentrate on finding
Blakeley’s killer and keeping their supervisors, critics and
the media at bay.
They go about their business in fine style. Despite the nagging
reminders of "The Undertaker," as the press dubbed the serial killer,
Jill and Max deal with the realities of the current apparent suspects.
Blakeley’s philandering husband is a prime candidate,
especially when a girlfriend turns on him. Then there’s a
next-door neighbour of Jill’s who keeps popping up at all the
wrong times but in the right places. There’s even a
supposedly close friend of Blakeley’s who deserves every bit
of the scrutiny she gets from Max, Jill and their colleagues as they
sift and sort the similarities of the clues from the present and past
murders.
Like other first-class British mystery novels, this one by Wells is
tightly structured, keeps the reader guessing about whodunit, and has
characters with depth, soul and interesting backgrounds. Who
doesn’t feel compassion for Jill as she struggles on her
comeback trail past her doubting Thomas colleagues? And surely, most
readers will be on Max’s side when he takes on his
browbeating supervisors more interested in career moves than in solving
a particularly pernicious crime? And when the two have solved the case,
who isn’t ready for their next one?
Special thanks to M. Wayne Cunningham (mw_cunningham@telus.net) for contributing his review of Where Petals Fall and to Soho Press for providing a copy of the book for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — M. Wayne Cunningham — All Rights Reserved — Reprinted with Permission
Have you read Where Petals Fall? How would you rate it?
Mysteries in this series ...
Into
the
Shadows
Carroll & Graf (Hardcover), May 2007
ISBN-10: 0-7867-1963-X (078671963X)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7867-1963-1 (9780786719631)
A Darker Side
Soho Constable (Hardcover), June 2008
ISBN-10: 1-56947-509-1 (1569475091)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-509-6 (9781569475096)
Where Petals Fall
Soho Constable (Hardcover), May 2009
ISBN-10: 1-56947-572-5 (1569475725)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-572-0 (9781569475720)
Omnimystery
keywords for Where Petals Fall
...
Location(s) referenced: England.
