Saturday, March 11, 2006

Paula Gosling: The Woman In Red

Nicked this in the clearout at my father's flat. The name Gosling rang a bell, but I couldn't remember what I'd read by her. As usual, eh? So just now, before blogging, I looked her up, and she's written some lovely little mysteries, that I enjoyed very much; in other words my memory served me well on this occassion. I've read The Body in Blackwater Bay (the reviewer on www.mysteryguide.com doesn't seem to like it, but I remember it as being fair enough), and I know I've read The Wychford Murders... but I don't remember the storyline at the moment.

Anywhoo, this one is about a dead man who has fallen of a tall building of luxury holiday homes belonging to foreigners residing in the Costa del Sol (did that sentence just become extremely long?). A man is arrested for his murder, and an embassy employee is told to come help him out. The whole affair has its roots in the arrest and death of the arrested man's son some years before, and the forged paintings Junior produced.

Quite charming, and a niblet-sized account of post-Franco 1983 Spain, before the EU really kicked in. It's also rather funny in parts.

"This time, when he moved his body, it wasn't so bad. It was still agony, but the agonies had sorted themselves out. There was a small agony in his left knee, a medium agony in both elbows, and quite a respectable-sized agony in his chest. Also, his nose itched.
Being alive was not all he'd hoped it would be as he'd leapt out of the falling car."

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