In Search of Murder: An Inspector Alvarez Mystery

Insp. Enrique Alvarez doesn’t mind investigating crimes, as long as the work doesn’t interfere with eating proper meals, drinking the right drinks, and getting enough rest, as shown in Jeffries’s 37th mystery featuring the easygoing Mallorcan policeman (after 2012’s Murdered by Nature). Relentlessly prodded by exasperated and sarcastic Superior Chief Salas, Alvarez tries to determine if the swimming pool drowning of Neil Picare, a rich, womanizing Englishman, was accident or murder. Alvarez interviews Picare’s wife, Cecily, and members of his staff, including the housekeeper, the cook, and the cleaner, with inconclusive results. Salas also insists that Alvarez talk to a number of Picare’s paramours. Alvarez is a congenial guide to the pleasures of Mallorca, even as he delves ever so reluctantly into the violence that sometimes mars this paradise, and if the crime and its solution are unremarkable, the tour is still enjoyable. (Apr.)