An Air That Kills

This engrossing launch of a series from Creasy Award winner Taylor (The Second Midnight) introduces Jill Francis, a heartsick London journalist visiting Philip, a former colleague, and his wife, Charlotte, in the postwar English countryside. In Lydmouth, Jill is caught up in a local police case involving the town ne'er-do-well's discovery of an old wooden box containing an infant's bones, a scrap of yellowed newsprint and a brooch. New CID Inspector Richard Thornhill questions Charlotte, whose family owns the newspaper the fragment matches, and Major Harcutt, who is compiling a history of Lydmouth. Then Harcutt is slain, leaving the ne'er-do-well as prime suspect in everyone's minds until Jill, who has been helping the major's daughter cope with her father's death, stumbles on the truth. Taylor subtly weaves the threads of this thoughtful, melancholy tale until they become an interlaced whole before the reader's eyes. (Mar.)