A Question of Guilt

January 1, 2013
No less a master than Alfred Hitchcock successfully turned an injury into a crime-solving device in Rear Window, and veteran author Tanner now tweaks that approach in this suspenseful tale about an engagingly bright and tenacious heroine. Journalist Sally Proctor is going batty from boredom as she spends a year recuperating from ski-related multiple fractures in her folks' Rookery Farm in England's rural Somerset. Past 30, she worries about emerging crow's feet while hobbling around on crutches, and then her fellow dumps her for another woman. No wonder her imagination is readily captured by a local woman's crusade to free her brother from a life term in prison. Five years have passed since his incarceration, but in the time-honored tradition of it's never too late to find the truth, Sally gamely hops about, digging into local news files, discovering discrepancies, and stirring up trouble in this eminently readable, very British mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)