No Laughing Matter

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 1 НОЯБ. 1993 Г.

``. . .Unlike the living, the dead have no means of safeguarding their secrets,'' thinks detective inspector Luke Thanet in his 12th case, while viewing the corpse of vintner Zak Randish. The victim's jugular vein was severed when he was shoved through a window of his winery's laboratory, the scene of considerable violence. Thanet bypasses such mundane stuff as physical evidence (he has only one suspect's shoes checked for broken glass and we never learn the result), preferring instead to dig deeply into the dead man's unsavory past. Uncovering wife-beating and crass womanizing for starters, Thanet finds an ugly secret under each overturned stone, exposing the last secret, a real shocker, that leads to a stunning outcome. Adding dimension to the picture are leisurely looks at Thanet's daughter Bridget's unhappy romance, peripheral characters' battles with anorexia, dyslexia, leukemia and post-partum depression and the difficulties of British winemakers, struggling along without ``any of the grants the French and Germans get.'' Simpson ( Wake the Dead ) has written an absorbing tale, but much of the action takes place offstage. Mystery Guild selection.