Nor All Your Tears: A Dr. Lance Elliot Mystery

Set in 1977, McCarthy’s follow-up to 2010’s Dying to Know offers an uneasy mix of violent death and whimsy. Soon after South London police surgeon Lance Elliot and his veterinarian girlfriend, Max, attend parents’ night at a local school to support a project of his eccentric father, the body of a P.E. teacher shows up, battered with a dumbbell. Someone later jams a compass through a math teacher’s eye, and a biology teacher is drowned with a frog in his mouth. As dyspeptic Inspector Masson observes, bizarre murders appear to pop up whenever one of the Elliots is around. Meanwhile, Max attracts a vicious stalker. Some may find the mayhem at odds with the cheerfully arch narrative, which emphasizes Lance’s intelligence while revealing his personal ineptitude, as he fails to notice how his innocent friendship with an attractive policewoman upsets Max. Readers with a taste for verbal cleverness and retro slang will be most rewarded. (Apr.)