Vain Hope

Christine Green. Severn House Publishers, $25.99 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-7278-5848-1

Following their debut in Angel Fire (Forecasts, Aug. 6, 2001), acting DCI Thomas Rydell and his assistant, Sgt. Denni Caldicote, return in Christine Green's police procedural, Vain Hope. When someone bumps off Saul Ravenscroft, the leading cosmetic surgeon at the Harmony Clinic, the two investigators soon get enmeshed in a host of complications, not least the victim's having carried on an affair with the clinic's steely chief, Carla Robins.

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