Murder Among the Pines

January 15, 2018
A former Toronto police officer finds herself trying to exonerate her ex-husband of a murder charge.Maxine Benson is the police chief of the resort town of Port Ainslie, where the rare major crimes that crop up are usually handled by the Ontario Provincial Police. Spotting her ex-husband, James Herbert Benson, with an attractive and much younger woman, she is soon being introduced to giggly Lana Jewel Laverne Parker and finds a bit of the green-eyed monster emerging. That all ends when Lana is found floating in the lake outside the resort hotel where she and James are staying, beaten and missing a large diamond Max had noticed hanging on a chain around her neck. Max calls in the OPP, who promptly arrest James. He claims that Lana received a phone call and left their room around midnight and that though he looked for her he didn't find her and finally went back to bed. Sgt. Gregory Stanton is rude and condescending and so sure that he has his man that he doesn't look beyond the obvious. Max may have no reason to love her ex, but she doesn't see him as a killer. Stanton's not interested in the alternative possibility she comes up with, so it's up to her and her little team to produce some proof.Although there's not much mystery here, Reynolds (Murder Below Zero, 2017, etc.) does provide a neat primer on how to solve a crime in double-quick time.

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