Over My Dead Body

Set circa 1988, bestseller Archer’s overstuffed fourth police procedural featuring Det. Chief Insp. William Warwick (after Turn a Blind Eye) finds William and his wife on a cruise ship heading for New York. When Fraser Buchanan, the chairman of the Pilgrim Line, dies on board, the ship’s captain asks William to investigate. Back in England, William returns to his role as head of the London Metropolitan Police’s newly formed Unsolved Murder Unit. The team is assigned five cases, in which William’s superior believes the perpetrators got away with murder. Each investigation is farfetched and riddled with coincidences. Meanwhile, William is intent on tracking down his nemesis, millionaire art collector and thief Miles Faulkner. Faulkner has recently escaped capture by the police, for which William rightly feels responsible after making a poor decision during a car chase. The resolution of the cruise ship case, which reads much like a quaint golden age mystery, disappoints. Smooth prose makes up only in part for a lack of depth and a hero prone to acting in irritatingly stupid ways. This one’s for diehard Archer fans only. (Oct.)