Clare Curzon, The Glass Wall

The Glass Wall

Clare Curzon

Dunne, January 2007, $23.95

ISBN 0312349637

Near London, Ramon, a Filipino bartender, watches in shock as nonagenarian invalid Emily Withers falls from her seventeenth floor penthouse apartment to the street. Once he realizes he is the sole witness he enters the building. He assumes someone, probably the killer or her caretaker, remains inside the apartment, but is soon sure no one else is there, so he enters. Ramon cleans up the place because no one must know he was there, though the woman's great-niece Nurse Alyson Orme expected him to go there. Still, if interrogated by the cops, Ramon feels confident he will be okay because he has experience with inquiries much more unsavory than any in western civilization, as the cops would never consider removing tongues.

Thames Valley Superintendent Mike Yeadings and Detective Sargent Rosemary Zyczynski lead the investigation into the death of the elderly Miss Withers who could not leave her bed without assistance. However, the crime scene makes no sense as it is too clean, leading Mike and Rosemary to wonder if the culprit stayed around to clean the place up. They look into those connected to Miss Withers to include her grieving great-niece Alyson, her doctor Keith Stanford and the missing care-giver Sheena Judd, but find little to prove one of these pushed the ninety-four year old out of the window.

This complex police procedural uses secondary characters to complicate the investigation so that the audience, like Mike and Rosemary struggle with the whodunit. Thus fans of the series will treasure this entry filled with red herrings and cleansed crime scenes from the onset, as everyone will wonder for instance why Ramon did what he did. THE GLASS WALL is a tremendous murder mystery that is a one sitting read, as Claire Curzon provides what may be Yeadings' best tale in his illustrious dozen or so novels.