Dark Mirror
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4.5 • 13 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Barry Maitland, nominated by The Australian as one of the top five crime writers in the world, returns with a vengeance in Dark Mirror.
When Marion Summers - red-haired, beautiful and mysterious - collapses and dies in the rarefied surrounds of the London Library, DI Kathy Kolla and DCI David Brock are sent to head the investigation. Kathy finds a reluctant kinship with the feisty Marion, who had, like Kathy, left a difficult home life when young and struck out to London for independence.
Marion's research on the intriguing, adulterous circle of artists, wives, lovers and muses around Victorian artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti seems irrelevant until the use of arsenic arises. As Brock and Kolla get closer to the truth, another victim dies an excruciating death by poison in a library, and it looks like a serial poisoner is on the loose.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When Ph.D. student Marion Summers collapses and dies in the London Library in the excellent ninth entry in Maitland's series featuring Kathy Kolla, newly promoted to detective inspector, and Det. Chief Insp. David Brock (Spider Trap, etc.), everyone assumes her diabetes is to blame. But when arsenic is discovered in Summers's system, Kolla takes charge of her first investigation. As part of her thesis, Summers was researching the 19th-century avant-garde painters and poets known as the Pre-Raphaelites. Summers had recently become obsessed with poisons, particularly arsenic, and her theories concerning its role in the lives of the Pre-Raphaelites had caused tensions among her academic peers. With Brock's help, Kolla digs deeper into the young woman's life and uncovers an unsettling past and numerous suspects who may have wished her harm. Maitland crafts a suspenseful whodunit with enough twists and turns to keep even the sharpest readers on their toes.
Customer Reviews
Great writing but...
...I solved whodunnit by about half way through the book. The more red herrings that came up, the more obvious it bacame who it really was.