cover image According to the Evidence

According to the Evidence

Bernard Knight. Severn, $28.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-7278-6986-9

Set in 1955, Knight's enjoyable second Richard Pryor mystery (after 2010's Where Death Delights) finds Pryor, now a Home Office forensic pathologist, and his professional partner, Angela Bray, a forensic biologist, continuing to run their private consulting business from a secluded house in the Welsh countryside near the English border. Success brings them three simultaneous cases: the suspicious death of a farm mechanic crushed by a tractor, the supposed poisoning of a woman dying of cancer by her veterinarian husband, and a British soldier's death in an accidental shooting incident in the Middle East that the soldier's widow is calling a murder. Knight may disappoint some readers by refusing to turn Pryor into an all-purpose detective or to emphasize action and intrigue, but the low-key sexual tension of Pryor's thus far platonic relationships with Bray and his secretary, Moira Davison, provides plenty of dramatic interest for those who prefer quieter traditional mysteries. (May)