A Late Phoenix

An interesting read the way only the British can write. Set in current time, a flash back to the 1940's war time is necessary to figure out this one. Uniquely written to get the reader to follow the clues and the "detecting" strategies used by the characters. A good mix of medical and legal with local color of the times. The plot is well developed and if you enjoy a British mystery, this is one you will enjoy.

Ms. Aird is a master storyteller! Her books are wonderful examples of the tight detective story. My only complaint is that they are too short. I can finish them in about an hour and I for one would like more time to savour her craftsmanship. In this book Cheif Inspector Sloane is taxed with finding the identity of a skeleton that had been shot 25 to 30 years ago. Murder was definitely the cause of death in this case, so Sloan is on the hunt again for a murderer. I think the best part of a Catherine Aird book is the wry humour, and of course, the inimitable Leeyes (Sloane's superior officer). While Sloane is trying to identify his 25-year-old corpse, and to determine whether or not it was indeed murder, another very recent body turns up. What is the connecting thread between the two murders? Catherine Aird is a true delight!

There's a strange familiarity I found with the characters of 'A Late Phoenix' which is only apparent in the greatest of writers (Crane, Zelazny, Fitzgerald, Tyler, and for the more 'mysterious' variety - Sayers, Stout, Tey, Christie, and Mortimer). Crosby is always great as the comic relief (always reminding me of friends I've had in school or more often than I'd care to think about, myself :P). Also of listening to the audio book, Bailey's performance is masterful and has a minimalist professonalism - he's no David Suchet...to his credit. Aird is, in my opinion and rather arguably, one of the greatest mystery writers of all-time (Sayers, Stout, and Christie being the others). I've read quite a few mysteries and this has to be one of my favorites because it doesn't just stick to the immediate mystery, there are countless other 'mini-mysteries' within it (like all good mysteries have). Also because the 'main mystery' behind this story is something to be solved on an incredibly difficult scale, because the protagonist must solve something that happened way way in the past (as it was Tey's 'A Daughter in Time').

I recommend Robin Bailey's unabridged narration. As always, he's the perfect reader for an English cozy mystery, and a fine actor. He can slip into and out of the voices of young constable Crosby, an old man whose lungs were damaged by poison gas in WWI, an overweight woman with a bad leg in a doctor's office, and many more, all without missing a beat.The Battle of Britain, of course, didn't just involve the bombing of London; even thirty years later, Lamb Lane in Berebury is still a bomb site. (The council and the owners have been fighting for years about the building plans.) Now that everyone has their act together, the bomb rubble is being cleared - and the excavator hits just the wrong (or right) place: the skeleton of a pregnant woman was buried on the site, dating back to the war. Even before the autopsy, Dr. Dabbe doesn't buy the theory that a bomb would have laid her out so neatly with no visible crush injuries, so Sloan is stuck with an investigation that the superintendent would be just as happy to write off as 'historical' rather than 'possible murder', but there are suggestive points: the absence of any identification - or wedding ring - on the body, for one. Other missing pieces include a hue-and-cry for a missing person (there wasn't any) and the required notification of the local archeologists about the construction (the notice never arrived - if it was ever sent). And when the archaeologists had arrived in spite of everything, someone had moved their pegs out of the danger zone.Inspector Sloan, beginning his digging while the contractors are banned from continuing theirs, turns up various interesting tidbits: the memories of the older members of the Berebury force and the firefighting and rescue teams of the time, as well as the receptionist of the doctor's office across from the site (the old doctor himself died a few months ago). The Waite brothers, sons of the old couple who used to live in the bombed house, both left after the war, but only Harold inherited it, and promptly sold the site; Leslie, a black sheep, was disinherited. Why? And why did the self-made buyer want it but let it get bogged down in planning fights for so many years - or did someone else engineer the delay? And how and why did the clearance plans finally get approved?Apart from interesting sidelights on living through bombing, not once but over and over again, we have Miss Tyrell, breaking in the new Dr. Latimer as the late Dr. Tarde's successor, and William Latimer's own attempts to find his feet in Calleshire's medical community as a first-generation doctor.