A Timely Death - Hardcover

Plumbing the troubled waters of the relations between men and women in her fifth Francesca Wilson story (after Death Among the Dons), Neel delivers a clear-eyed view of both domestic conflict, which hovers over Francesca's marriage, and domestic violence, which haunts the crime she solves. Volunteering at a women's shelter during an outbreak of measles, Francesca is grateful for the medical training of the most recent client, Annabelle Brewster, who has fled her violent lover, Dr. Antony Price. Matthew Sutherland, the shelter's lawyer, is anxious to take Annabelle's case-but he can't when he learns that his firm represented Antony's stepmother in a similar case of domestic violence against her husband (Antony's father), William. Francesca's husband, John McLeish, now Detective Chief Superintendent at New Scotland Yard, bumps into the Price family from another angle: his ex-lover, also a copper, is investigating fraud at William Price's time-share vacation business. When William Price is found hanging in his kitchen and money is missing from the safe, the police focus on two suspects: Price's second son, a drug addict, and an MP who wanted #20,000 the dead man had been holding for him. Neel covers a spectrum of intimate relations-battered women returning to their lovers; happily married people teetering on the edge of infidelity; lovers driven to extreme actions by obsession, libido or deviousness-with admirable nuance, carving psychological texture into this skillfully plotted mystery.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Francesca Wilson is an unwilling superwoman. On top of managing her demanding family and a fragile marriage, she is forced to take over at a local women's shelter when her mother becomes ill. One of her first clients is a young woman abused by her live-in partner, an ambitious doctor called Antony Price. Coincidence will soon connect the abusive Dr. Price with a murder that Francesca's copper husband, John, is investigating. The murder victim is Dr. Price's father, who is found hanged, his bloated body attired in sleazy women's underclothing. The hot-tempered Dr. Price is accused of the murder, but before the real killer is found, John and Francesca find both their detecting skills and their marriage put to the test. Neel's latest is a sophisticated and cerebral mystery with dark overtones and plenty of unexpected twists. Emily Melton