Devil's Chair

June 2, 2014
In Masters’s tepid fifth procedural featuring Martha Gunn (after 2012’s Smoke Alarm), the Shrewsbury coroner once again proves essential in helping Det. Insp. Alex Randall solve a baffling case. Following a drunken argument, Tracy Walsh leaves her partner, Neil Mansfield, and drives off with her four-year-old daughter, Daisy, only to crash near the Devil’s Chair, a rocky outcrop local legend associates with black magic. The police, alerted to the accident by an anonymous phone call, discover Tracy severely injured and comatose, and Daisy vanished. At first, the only traces that Alex and his colleagues can find of the child are a battered toy and a bloodstained rear seat. Eventually, they begin to turn up a series of clues, including a child’s shoe, an herb bouquet, and a Barbie dressing gown, seemingly planted at the scene of the accident by a malicious individual. The solution that Tracy and Alex eventually uncover together, unfortunately, proves too convoluted to be believable.

July 15, 2014
Afour-year-old child vanishes so completely that rumor has it the devil tookher.Drunken Tracy Walsh has an argument with her boyfriend, Neil Mansfield;snatches her screaming daughter, Daisy, from her bed; and takes off up theBurway toward the Devil's Chair, an area of England long associated withwitchcraft and strange happenings. Early the next morning, an unidentifiedcaller reports a crashed car with a woman inside. Tracy is rushed to thehospital in critical condition, but a massive search turns up no trace of Daisysave one of her slippers. Leading the case is DI Alex Randall, whose wife ismentally ill. He's made coroner Martha Gunn his sounding board on tough caseseven as they fight their attraction for each other. The police leave no stoneunturned. Re-examining the empty cottage from which the emergency call wasmade, they find another slipper that hadn't been there when they firstsearched. The owner of the cottage, who's been out of the country, has acheckered history: Years before she'd been accused of murdering her entirefamily with poisonous mushrooms. Neil, always much more loving and engaged withDaisy than her mother was, is having an affair with a client who desperately wantsa child. When Tracy dies, her estranged family takes a sudden interest in thebeautiful Daisy because it appears they might make some money from her tragicstory. The enigmatic clues someone is providing the police lead nowhere untilMartha dredges up an old memory that will help crack the mystifying case.Masters (Smoke Alarm,2012, etc.) provides another entertaining procedural whose twists will keep youguessing.

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August 1, 2014

Legends say that Long Mynd mountain is shrouded in evil and the devil laughs in his chair at the peak as motorists try to find their way up the Burway. It is there that Tracey Walsh, driving with her four-year-old daughter, Daisy, loses control of the car and crashes. Tracey survives but is comatose; Daisy is nowhere to be found. Senior investigating officer DI Alex Randall is challenged with finding Daisy and uncovering the truth. He turns to coroner Martha Gunn for help. VERDICT Gunn is a steady knife, cutting her way through the tangled mystery in her third appearance (after Smoke Alarm). This British police procedural/forensic investigation would be well paired with Kathy Reichs's "Temperance Brennan" series.

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