Murder Most Vile
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- €10.99
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- €10.99
Publisher Description
The search for a missing artist draws Donald Langham and Ralph Ryland into London’s criminal underworld with deadly consequences.
London. April, 1957. Private investigator Donald Langham is approached by retired businessman Vernon Lombard to find his missing son, Christopher. But what appears to be a simple case of a missing artist becomes far more alarming when Langham realizes there’s more to Christopher’s disappearance than meets the eye, and then makes a terrible discovery.
Meanwhile, Langham’s business partner Ralph Ryland’s search for a missing greyhound forces him to confront a shameful secret from his own past, with terrifying consequences. Can Langham navigate London’s criminal underworld, fascism and deception to track down a killer and save Ralph’s life?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the outset of British author Brown's enjoyable ninth Langham and Dupré mystery (after 2021's Murder by Numbers), ailing businessman Vernon Lombard visits the London office of detective Donald Langham. Lombard wishes to hire Langham to find his artist son, Christopher. After discovering that Lombard's description of his son has little bearing on reality, Langham and his wife, Marie Dupré, visit the artist colony where Christopher resided. No one there has anything kind to say about the missing man, but a lead develops in the form of a mysterious bleached blond. Meanwhile, Langham's partner Ralph Ryland's simple case of a lost dog has nightmarish consequences for both men. Even though WWII ended more than a decade before, there are still those seeking to destroy the enemies of their monstrous cause. When Ryland uncovers plans for an appalling hate crime, the race is on to stop it and to solve a murder with a motive as old as time. Brown does a good job depicting postwar Britain—a sweeping mix of butlers, Cockney accents, and cups of tea—amid all the murder and mayhem, though this isn't the place to start for newcomers.
