Fatal Music: A Captain Darac Mystery

Readers with weak stomachs should be prepared for a particularly grisly death in Morfoot’s intriguing second whodunit featuring French police captain Paul Darac (after 2016’s Impure Blood). A summons from his superior sends Darac, a jazz musician in his limited spare time, from a gig to the home of 71-year-old Jeanne Mesnel, whose bloated body has been found in her hot tub days after she expired. To Darac’s disgust, one of Mesnel’s arms has been chewed off at the shoulder, the other at the elbow, presumably by animals. These injuries appear to have occurred postmortem, consistent with an accidental death by drowning. But, of course, the inquiry will turn into a homicide investigation; the first indication that all is not what it seems comes from a witness who claims that a man with a criminal history of violence threatened to kill Mesnel three weeks earlier. The road to the logical solution is full of surprises that will please fair-play fans. [em]Agent: Ian Drury, Sheil Land Associates (U.K.). (Apr.) [/em]