The Wages of Desire: An Inspector Lamb Mystery

Set in 1942, Kelly’s pleasantly baffling second whodunit featuring Det. Chief Insp. Thomas Lamb of the Hampshire Constabulary fulfills the promise of 2015’s The Language of the Dead. When the Rev. Gerald Wimberly finds a corpse in the cemetery adjoining his church in the village of Winstead, he alerts the police. The victim is identified as conscientious objector Ruth Aisquith, a member of the Women’s Land Army. She was shot in the back and left facedown next to a grave. After Lamb interviews the oily Wimberly and his wife, Wilhemina, who are both less than forthcoming about what happened, he quickly gets a sense that solving the murder will be tricky. When a man working on the site of a new POW camp unearths a skull, the case takes a different turn, raising speculation that Aisquith’s death is related to an older crime. Fans of the TV series Foyle’s War, which similarly addresses the role of the police during WWII, will be pleased. [em]Agent: Joelle Delbourgo, Joelle Delbourgo Associates. (Aug.) [/em]