A Dead Liberty

Rating:
Summary: Exercising the right to remain silent
Review: A word of advice: get the unabridged narration by Robin Bailey, whose voice is ideally suited for reading a cozy British murder mystery, with a fine command of accents and the ability to give each character his or her own voice.

The Crown vs. Lucy Mirabel Durmast wouldn't have been any of Sloan's business, if it weren't for two things: Trevor Porritt of Calleford Division suffering permanent brain damage after being hit by a burglar, and Lucy's determination to stand mute to everyone, not even engaging a defense counsel. Sloan inherits Porritt's caseload, and Lucy's refusal to speak, let alone plead, causes enough agitation among the forces of the law that Sloan and Crosby are instructed to go over the ground again and find out what's going on.

The victim, Kenneth Carline, was a young structural engineer for Durmast's, the civil engineering firm run by Lucy's father; he crashed his car after lunch with Lucy, due to being poisoned. (Bill Durmast is out of the country overseeing the building of a new Dhlasan capital city in Africa, and neither the British envoy nor Durmast's second-in-command back home are about to mess up the contract by spilling the beans.) The police, as it happens, know Durmast's quite well; not only did they build the Palshaw tunnel, which helped out Traffic Division, but the tunnel opening ceremony was a disaster: a gang of protesters for the nearby nuclear waste disposal plant used it to get a big banner photographed instead of the tunnel behind the banner.

Lucy isn't saying anything to anyone, but Sloan and Crosby manage to find a lot of things that don't quite tie up: anti-nuclear leaflets in Carline's car; a college friendship between Carline and one of the princes of Dhlasa, who's now missing; the lack of evidence of any personal attachment between Lucy and Carline (who had just announced his engagement to someone else); the mystery of how the demonstrators got at the tunnel access via a gate that should have been locked. Then someone else connected with the case is murdered, and the one person who couldn't have done it is Lucy, in prison for contempt of court while awaiting the resumption of her trial for murder. (She couldn't get bail anyway, since she wasn't speaking and therefore hadn't asked for it.)

But if she didn't poison Carline in the chili con carne at lunch, who could have within the pathologist's time limit? Especially since he must have been nearly flying to get his car from lunch at her father's house, where he was picking up blueprints, to the official closing of the tunnel contract at Palshaw at 2 o'clock - even though he never made it.

Excellent character development, as always; while Lucy won't talk, we are told part of the story from her point of view. Her best friend Cecilia seems like a good, loyal ally, with her own life as both an artist in pottery, a mother of twin infant sons, and the wife of John Allsworthy, of the manor house at Braffle Episcopi. And there's the angle of international intrigue, as the hunt for Prince Aturu ensues while the Berebury CID tries to decide whether the Mgongwala contract had anything to do with Carline's death.

Rating:
Summary: Silence Hurts No Man?
Review: But it almost hurts Lucy Durmast. She has been arrested for murder of one of her father's employees, and responds to the accusation with total silence. Sloan is put on the case because of the demise of the officer that had been previously investigating, and he has to determine whether Lucy is indeed guilty. It brings a whole bunch of things to the Berebury Police detachment including the African kingdom of Dlasa and some high profile civil engineering projects. Even though I figured out the means and who did the deed, it was still an interesting read as all of Ms. Aird's books are.

Rating:
Summary: Silence Hurts No Man?
Review: But it almost hurts Lucy Durmast. She has been arrested for murder of one of her father's employees, and responds to the accusation with total silence. Sloan is put on the case because of the demise of the officer that had been previously investigating, and he has to determine whether Lucy is indeed guilty. It brings a whole bunch of things to the Berebury Police detachment including the African kingdom of Dlasa and some high profile civil engineering projects. Even though I figured out the means and who did the deed, it was still an interesting read as all of Ms. Aird's books are.