Miss Minchin Dies: A Sukey Reynolds Mystery

At the start of Rowlands's routine 11th police procedural featuring Det. Constable Sukey Reynolds, of the Avon and Somerset CID (after 2009's A Fool There Was), milkman Joe Atwood tells the police how he entered the cottage of regular customer Adelaide Minchin, whose last delivery was still on her doorstep, and found her apparently unconscious on her bathroom floor. Atwood was too timid to ascertain that the woman was in fact dead. The postmortem indicates that Miss Minchin died in an accidental fall, but her physician has a gut feeling, based on an incident involving her late cousin, Muriel, from whom she inherited the cottage, that his patient was a victim of foul play. Reynolds investigates, but she must also deal with the case of a missing 15-year-old girl. The explanation for Miss Minchin's death may strike some readers as more silly than clever. (May)