cover image Beware of the Dog

Beware of the Dog

E. X. Ferrars. Doubleday Books, $17 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-385-42288-8

One of Britain's most dependable and prolific mystery writers dishes up a feast of suspects and red herrings in the latest of more than 60 published novels. Marred only minimally by the hesitancy with which the amateur detective, con man and chronic liar Felix Freer, confronts the plot's complications, the story begins with the death of elderly, well-off Helen Lovelock in the town of Allingford. Survivors are a grandnephew arrived from Australia only a few months earlier, and a grandniece who flies in from America. When the niece is shot in bed soon after the funeral, the deceased's woefully unprovided-for housekeeper calls for help to Virginia Freer, Felix's estranged wife, who is living next door. As the neighbors assemble--they include a disturbed man and his self-sacrificing mother, a teacher and his wife--a safe full of emeralds (which may be fakes) is hastily ransacked. Virginia summons Felix and the chase is on. Ferrars ( Sleep of the Unjust ) establishes multiple layers of deception, drawing on all to fashion her deft solution. (Jan.)