An Old School Tie

The old school is Rosington, located in an English hamlet of the same name, where people are as xenophobic as those in any hillbilly town in the Ozarks. They suspect old school boy James Hanbury of murdering his wife of seven weeks to collect her inheritance. Hanbury is a rogue, though he does continue to kennel his dead wife's dogs. Fortunately for him, William Dougal, a freelance philosopher, undertakes to ferret out the solution to the murder, but in the meantime, two more deaths occur. Characters here wear false identities, and an old girl turns up who knows a secret about an old boy escapade 30 years earlier. Taylor's fourth novel (Caroline Minuscule, proceeds as tediously as a rainy country weekend. Rosington is overpopulated with suspects who are also tiresome, crochety bores. Only Mrs. Hanbury, poor dear, is happily out of it. (November)