A Deadly Schedule

In his seventh appearance, Bournemouth's head copper, Superintendent Douglas Roper, meets a pleasant English lady while on holiday in Greece. He also finds another Englishwoman dead from a blow to the head in a hotel room; the two women were recent acquaintances. This is the first in a intricate series of coincidences that shape this latest, engrossing procedural from the author of Final Appointment. Roper, back in Bournemouth, investigates the bludgeoning death of a small-time crook; then the body of a young woman is found in her kitchen. She had worked at a travel agency and had booked the Greek holiday for the first victim; she'd also been friendly with that woman's husband, a doctor with access to the medication that killed her, and was related to the small-time crook. Meted out in Hart's understated, highly effective prose, the coincidences unfold with a utter credibility, as does the character of the antiques-loving Superintendent who shrewdly listens to his suspects' stories, then notes the lie or crucial evasion with laser-like precision. (Sept.)