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Walking Into Murder

Joan Dahr Lambert
Self-Published (2010)
ISBN 9781453647837
Reviewed by Enid Grabiner for RebeccasReads (01/11)

Still humiliated by her husband’s affair and her subsequent divorce, Laura Moreland, Professor of Gender Studies, accepts a teaching seminar in London, but decides to first treat herself to a walking trip in the bucolic Cotswolds.   Along a foggy country trail she is literally kidnapped and forced to assume the role of her captor’s wife as a guest at the Torrington Manor House.   If this experience of playacting while under duress doesn’t test Laura’s new independence, interacting with the eccentric family and staff certainly does.  Unnerved enough, discovering a dead body that seems to materialize and disappear, only adds to the anxiety, but at the same time peaks her curiosity.  And the mystery’s afoot!!!

Laura has to use her gut instinct to choose her allies.  She enlists the aid of two teenagers as she doggedly investigates murders and thefts. Often without thought of consequence  she  places these two as well as herself at risk,  mustering on as if on a mission to prove her own sense of worth.

As a lover of English country mysteries, this one really attracted my interest.  All the components are potentially present:  an English estate, an eccentric family, at risk children, the country doctor, all seemingly involved in murders, art heists, and love affairs. The novel, however, has too many contrived plots and too many underdeveloped characters to successfully carry the mystery to a satisfying resolution. The author, as a vehicle to control the logical movement of the characters and plot, keeps posing questions and answering them, as if not trusting the reader’s ability to reach the epiphanies on his own. 

 

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