Fruitful Bodies
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
After an aging musician becomes the chief suspect in a murder investigation, only her former pupil can save her
Sara Selkirk lives one of the most complicated lives in Bath. When she isn’t performing to rave reviews as a cellist, she must navigate the troubled waters of small-town life, a complicated relationship with the newly single amateur cellist DCI Andrew Poole, and the occasional murder. Another problem is heaped on when she discovers her former teacher Joyce Cruikshank trapped in the clutches of alcoholism. Sara decides to take her in and help her get the therapy she needs in the idyllic English spa town of Bath.
Dr. Golightly, the charismatic director of the Sulis Clinic, a magnet for the rich and supposedly unwell, claims that its mix of rest, art therapy, and organic cuisine is a potent one for well-being, and Sara arranges for Joyce to be admitted. But when Joyce is implicated in the murder of a Japanese tourist who is found dead in a cupboard in a Bath pub, Sara’s relationship with Andrew comes under strain. Then the Sulis patients begin to die, and Dr. Golightly’s reputation is on the brink of collapse. Sara is drawn further into the investigation—and into danger.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A follow-up to Fearful Symmetry, Joss's latest Sara Selkirk mystery offers another deftly textured evocation of an idyllic British locale. As the novel opens, famous cellist Selkirk comes across a former mentor whose musical star has drowned in alcoholism. She takes the woman in, despite the reservations of her boyfriend, police detective Andrew Poole, but when another friend, James, starts having stomach problems, she turns to Bath's fashionable Sulis Clinic. The clinic seems like the perfect answer to both problems until Sara is drawn into the murky relationships involving its governing triad: the charismatic but secretive proprietor; his unstable organic farmer son, Ivan; and Ivan's wife, Hilary, a fierce if often misguided protector of both the clinic and her husband's fragile equilibrium. When a Japanese guest at Ivan and Hilary's isolated B&B is murdered, Poole enters the case with a vigor that further strains his already tense relationship with Sara. Then, clinic patients begin to die, luring Sara herself into detection and danger. An overly complex plot and a series of contrivances weaken the story, but Joss portrays characters and relationships that are meaty enough to satisfy.
