At the outset of Curzon’s entertaining 21st Mike Yeadings mystery (after 2007’s The Edge
), a biker deliberately runs down Warren Laing, Sandy Craddock’s estranged half-brother, outside the auction house where Sandy works as an auctioneer’s porter. Sandy, who assumes he was the biker’s intended victim, decides to pose as the flashy Warren after learning that Warren, who’s in a coma in the hospital, has been mistakenly identified as himself. Just as he enters the charade, Sandy runs into the headstrong Fiona Morgan, who has an investigative interest in the real Warren. Looking to hide out, Sandy accepts Fiona’s invitation to join her at a Berkshire castle, where, among other surprises, a dying woman knocks on Sandy’s bedroom door one night. The intricately woven plot takes off in disparate directions, but Curzon methodically brings all the threads together as the members of Yeadings’s Thames Valley CID team strive to figure out whodunit. (Oct.)
