Murder House

November 11, 2013
In this darkly comic psychological thriller from Beaufort (the joint pen name of Susanna Gregory and Beau Riffenburgh), what should have been a minor procedural indiscretion—the illicit possession of a criminal case file—leaves police constable Helen Anderson vulnerable to ambitious and crooked defense barrister James Paxton, who was at school with her in Bristol years earlier. Smugly overconfident Paxton forces Helen to commit ever-greater crimes until he overplays his hand. Determined to remain a cop despite one serious faux pas, Helen demonstrates a laudable talent for improvisation and evasion as she comes to realize she can’t avoid her new career path. Each step into depravity and self-indulgence seems justifiable to Helen, each heinous act an easier choice than the one before. Beaufort (A Dead Man’s Secret and seven other Sir Geoffrey Mappestone mysteries) artfully presents a monster in a flattering light while never underplaying the gravity of her crimes.

December 1, 2013
A police constable looks at murder from more angles than she's ever wanted to. Helen Anderson drifted into the police after graduating from university with no better idea of what to do with her life. Her first assignment in a pleasant rural area is easy and enjoyable, but things change when she's moved to Bristol West, where she must deal with both persistent violent offenders and bigoted, sexist Sgt. Barry Wright. Helen's social life seems to improve when she meets a few old school friends after ticketing one of them. Lawyer James Paxton was a highflier at school who charmed her into a dismal one-night stand and then disappeared from her circle. Paxton has made enemies of the police by defending violent criminals and getting them off by all means necessary. When Helen wrongly takes a case file with her on a weekend away, Paxton steals it, copies it and blackmails her into meeting him in a deserted house to force her to help get his client off. Helen kills him in a moment of rage. Appalled at first, she soon rationalizes her actions and uses her police skills to hide her guilt. Once the body is finally found, it is not where she left it. DI Neel Oakley and his team at first think it is the body of an Albanian professor who was renting the house short-term. Feeling sorry for Helen, Oakley tries to keep her from the wrath of Sgt. Wright by using her on his team when he can. Even when the police identify the corpse as Paxton, Helen does all she can to spread red herrings. The pressure causes her to do things she never imagined she was capable of. Taking a break from his historical mysteries (A Dead Man's Secret, 2011, etc.), Beaufort produces a keen psychological thriller along the lines of Ruth Rendell. Although readers know the killer from the start, Beaufort deftly explores just how far someone will go to protect herself.

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January 1, 2014

PC Helen Anderson might not be cut out for police work. Educated and sincere, she nonetheless falters under a chauvinistic boss and has made a bad choice in befriending sleazy James Paxton, a criminal attorney with questionable ethics and tactics. When Helen borrows case files from work so she can read them over the weekend, she makes a mistake that will forever haunt her. For James makes copies of the files for his own benefit and then holds them over Helen as leverage. In effect, she becomes a cop on the take. From there, her choices seem to spiral out of control, and committing murder is just one step in her descent into personal hell. VERDICT Known for the Sir Geoffrey Mappestone series (A Dead Man's Secret; Murder in the Holy City), Beaufort (a pseudonym for Susanna Gregory and Beau Riffenburgh) here crafts a psychologically chilling, contemporary stand-alone reminiscent of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2013
No one would ever think of soft-spoken policewoman Helen Anderson as a violent murderer. But when an old school friend picks up on a serious misjudgment Helen has made and threatens her with exposure, Helen momentarily loses control. As a policewoman, she knows exactly how the police will investigate the man's death, and she uses her insider knowledge to cover her tracks. But with the fear of discovery hanging over her, Helen feels increasingly backed into a corner. Fearful and fragile, she begins covering up the evidence, but eventually she's forced to face the fact that discovery of her crime is imminentand by the one colleague she really likes and trusts. At first, readers will feel sympathy for the hapless Helen, but, as the story progresses, it becomes more difficult to like her. A shock ending forces us to decide whether Helen is a young woman caught up in a terrible series of events, or whether she is evil personifiedor something in between. A gripping psychological thriller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)