Lamb to the Slaughter

January 5, 2009
The fourth in Templeton’s series to feature Scottish Det. Insp. Marjory Fleming (Cold in the Earth
, etc.) finds Fleming’s quiet community of Kirkluce divided by a plan to open a superstore that threatens local trade. Soon after Col. Andrew Carmichael, the owner of property essential to the developer’s proposal, receives a fatal shotgun blast to the chest, someone shoots young rowdy Barney Kyle in the back as he’s riding his bike. While the motive for killing Kyle appears different, Fleming and her team find some suggestive links between the two victims. Templeton does a nice job of conveying the details of smalltown life, though her characters and their motivations are less well developed than those of such better-known writers as Ruth Rendell and Minette Walters. Toward the end, the author throws in enough twists to distinguish this from many similar contemporary British police procedurals.