Wrongful Death

November 10, 2014
In La Plante’s convoluted ninth Anna Travis novel (after 2013’s Backlash), the English detective chief inspector takes charge of re-examining the months-old suicide of Joshua Reynolds, a London nightclub owner, after a man arrested for assaulting a police officer claims that it’s a case of murder. Setting aside plans to take an FBI course in Quantico, Va., Anna teams with Jessie Dewar, a hotshot FBI agent who’s in Europe doing research for a doctorate in forensic psychology. Anna and Jessie don’t see eye-to-eye, but a bigger problem arises when the competence of the officers who initially investigated Reynolds’s death comes into question. Revelations follow rapidly amid copious detail, both about the investigation and the characters’ thoughts and personal lives. Some readers may be jarred by British expressions emerging from American mouths, such as Don Blane, an FBI agent, saying, “Transport is just outside.” Not bloody likely. Agent: Gill Coleridge, Rogers, Coleridge & White (U.K.).

January 1, 2015

DCI Anna Travis is ready to head to Quantico, VA, for a training exchange; however, she has one last case to follow up on. This involves information from a man on trial that the death of London nightclub owner Josh Reynolds, ruled a suicide six months ago, was actually a murder. Instead of a quick wrap-up, Anna finds problems with the way the original investigation team handled it, and her exchange replacement, senior FBI agent Jesse Dewar, is making more enemies than friends at the Metropolitan Police. With her flight to Quantico approaching, Anna must choose between uncovering the truth of Reynolds's death or protecting her people. VERDICT In her latest outing after Backlash (first published in the UK in 2013), Anna Travis is now a seasoned investigator and willing to go to whatever lengths necessary for her job. Once again La Plante delivers a quality and complex police procedural.

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