Bat Out of Hell – Francis Durbridge
Set in Sussex in 1972, Geoffrey Stewart, a wealthy real estate agent, has it all. The well-appointed house. The Aston Martin. Diana, the trophy wife, twenty years younger and gorgeous. But there’s always a “but.”
Geoffrey didn’t get rich by spending money. So he gripes and moans about her “foolish” spending. Diana thinks this unreasonable, since the point in marrying a rich guy is to use his money for the important things in life. Like shopping. She sees him as a cranky old tightwad, with emphasis on “old.”
Mark Paxton has been working for Geoffrey as second in command. About the same age, it is only natural that Mark and Diana start to hit it off. But, no, Diana just leaving Geoffrey would be too hard. Murder seems a lot easier. But as Perry Mason once observed, “Murder is easy. It’s the getting away with it that’s really complicated.”
Telling anything more would be mere spoiler such is the sheer reading pleasure in the surprises in this exceptional mystery. The writing is lucid, the characterization just right, but it is the detonation of multiple surprises in this story that is the main attraction here.
Inspector Clay is an imperturbable head of the
investigation, but he’s no series hero. A prolific writer, mainly for TV and
radio, Durbridge never starred Clay in another book.
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