Hung Over

The 11th outing (after The Burning Ground) for Tim Simpson, art investor for a London bank, quickly moves past the puerile upper-class English drunken shenanigans of the first chapter. Tim is dispatched to the Norfolk countryside where a once-wealthy family is forced to sell its art collection, which features horses. At the same time, a dealer friend, who had sent Tim a cryptic note (also with equine elements), is murdered; Tim and the gendarmes are less than thrilled to discover the dead man's photographic record of his past sexual adventures. Identifying the participating women is child's play--they keep popping up in the art-selling family. At one point, Tim's wife bemoans the preponderance of horse paintings. Distracted readers may well concur, and perhaps also add a complaint or two concerning the plethora of overlapping biographies of horse painters. But the plot tightens its focus when a woman drowns and a bomb is attached to the underside of Simpson's Jag. The novel's taut ending is a thing of beauty. (Sept.)