A Fox in the Night

When Hannah Blezard's body is found off a boatyard dock in King's Minster, Dorset, the case is given by the County to Superintendent Roper. He faces a scarcity of clues in the apparent murder, but it's obvious from the start that the well-off widow drowned in her own swimming pool and not in the sea. Beginning with neighbors' inconclusive reports of a young man's visits to Mrs. Blezard, a telephone answering machine, some foot-prints and Blezard's abandoned Daimler, Roper ploddingly re-creates the crime. The brutal stabbing death of a petty fence-cum-Peeping Tom seems unrelated at first, but Roper (hero of A Pretty Place for a Murder ) succeeds, in his imperturbable way, in uncovering two kinds of blackmail, embezzlement and a tangle of relationships. He also helps straighten out an over-eager, over-stressed local cop. The procedural details are as fine as ever, though the pace may be a bit slow for American taste, but this is a nice piece of work featuring the phlegmatically appealing Roper. (Nov.)