The Headhunters
A DCI Helen Mallin investigation
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The second case for DCI Hen Mallin, introduced in The House Sitter.
When widowed parcel-force worker Bob Naylor plucks up the courage to join a writers' circle, he discovers a motley collection of wannabe authors whom he would rather avoid at all costs. But when a publisher is found murdered, after recently addressing the group, Bob feels compelled to stay.
Investigating Officer Hen Mallin attempts to investigate the group, despite their amateur sleuthing efforts and exhaustingly dramatic outbursts. And as another death casts the bewildered Bob in suspicion, the sinister secret of this circle finally starts to come to light . . .
Jo and Gemma are friends who meet for coffee every Saturday to gossip and discuss the state of the world. At one such meeting, Gemma mentions killing her boss and Jo goes along with the joke. But Jo is not amused when she finds a real body on the beach at Selsey soon afterwards - an unidentified nearly-naked woman, who has been drowned.
It take DCI Hen Mallin and her team some time to discover who the woman is, and as they are investigating, Jo and Gemma are getting into more trouble - they keep coming across dead bodies...
Peter Lovesey's thirtieth novel explores one of his favourite themes - the innocent caught up in sinister events.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lovesey's second novel starring Chichester CID inspector Henrietta \x93Hen\x94 Mallin (after 2005's The Circle) provides further proof that the CWA Diamond Dagger winner has no peer in presenting a traditional mystery, with all the clues hiding in plain sight. When a half-naked female body washes up on a beach, Mallin and her team must identify the woman as well as determine whether she met her end through foul play. Before the corpse can be named, Jo Stevens, who found the body tangled in seaweed, comes across another one in remarkably similar circumstances. Fearing that she'll fall under Mallin's intense scrutiny, Stevens fails to report this second death. Between the alternating perspectives of Mallin and Stevens, the suspense builds, enhanced by credible characters and healthy doses of black humor. The police eventually connect the two cases and focus on Stevens's new beau, a laconic ex-con who had a past with both victims, but the solution is, of course, not so straightforward. Inspector Mallin deserves as long a fictional career as Lovesey's other current series sleuth, Peter Diamond.
