Synopsis
"Who killed the preacher?"
Harriet Martens is taken aback. This is her first face-to-face meeting with the new Chief Constable, and he shot the question at her the moment she took the seat in front of his desk. Why is he setting out to antagonize her?
He must be talking about the famous Boy Preacher, who was murdered there thirty or more years ago. "He's bringing it up now because the old hotel that was the scene of the crime is about to be torn down." And he is giving Harriet the mystery to solve because he wants her out. The media has made much of how young he is, he has to establish himself and he doesn't want a much publicized female detective to steal any glory from him. The preacher's murder has been unsolvable for more than thirty years; Harriet's inevitable failure to solve it now will take care of her. . . .
Harriet was still at school when the murder happened. As she remembers, there were six or seven people, avid disciples, in a position to have killed the wildly popular young figure. But no one had ever been able to point out the killer—-or killers—-from that list. How in the world could she do it now? DNA, the chief told her. Find out whose DNA was on the boy's body, and get the confession out of him.
Oh, certainly, easy as pie. But Harriet has more than earned her title of The Hard Detective. She is determined to turn the tables on the chief, so determined that the case takes over her dreams. And it is, indeed, a dream that pries open the door leading her to the answer. She will certainly have her readers cheering her on and rejoicing with her when she manages to get her own back. Keating's delicious detective, now happily married and well set in her job, will delight her many fans and bring many more.
Kirkus Reviews
The new chief constable of Greater Birchester Police gives Det. Supt. Harriet Martens (A Detective Under Fire, 2004, etc.) two weeks to solve a 30-year-old murder. DNA evidence wasn't available when Krishna Kumaramangalam was strangled back in 1968, minutes before he was to address his followers at the Imperial Hotel. Now, however, Chief Constable Newcomen takes advantage of the Imperial's imminent demolition to demand that Harriet submit the seven suspects' outer clothing to the police lab to ascertain which of them was sprayed with the Boy Preacher's saliva in his dying moments. The case is a no-winner for Harriet. Either she'll fall down on the job, or Newcomen will hog the credit for a routine review of the evidence. And she's not at all pleased to find that the jittery constable seconded to help her is barely recovered from a nervous breakdown, or that two of the suspects-tabloid reporter Marcus Fairchild and Harish Nair, the Boy Preacher's cousin and landlord-have already died. That leaves only five possibles: gasbag barrister Lucas Calvert, imperious teacher Priscilla Knott, crippled watch-repairer Barney Trapnell, indecorous Bubsy Willson, and sharp operator Sydney Bigod. Worse, the DNA results point to the one suspect Harriet's convinced must be innocent. The case seems hopeless, unless of course Harriet has a providential dream that reveals the solution. As thin a mystery as Keating has ever set, without the complexity of morals and motives that marks his best work. Agent: Michael Sissons/PFD