Murder at St. Oswald's

Although she assembles the requisite elements of a contemporary British police procedural (a chief inspector with family problems, a mysterious murder and a centuries-old village facing modern issues), first novelist Bell fails to spark her story to life. During the St. Oswald's annual parish picnic, a teenage girl discovers a charred body in the park where she and her boyfriend, cricketer Frank Carr, had walked the evening before. Acting Chief Inspector Browne, aided by Constable Mitchell and Det. Sgt. Hunter, identifies the victim as Gary Carr, father of the cricket player, and discovers that the man's wife was known to be unhappy in her marriage. The victim's adolescent daughter then disappears, leaving a diary that leads police astray with fictional entries. While reconstructing the dead man's last days, the constabulary disinter long-kept secrets about members of St. Oswald's tight-knit community, which lead them to the murderer. A competently told tale with a mundane cast. (Jan.)