Thicker Than Water

April 13, 2009
Three separate lives eerily intersect in this effective if lightweight mystery from U.K. veteran Fraser (Next Door to Murder
). Whenbusinessman James Markham dumps his fiancée to marry a near stranger, his family is suspicious of his elusive interior designer wife, Abigail. Callum Firbank, a loving husband, dedicated friend and esteemed neighbor, appears to have the perfect life until one ostensibly innocuous outing sets off a perplexing and dangerous chain of events. Finally, pleasant hotel owner Jill Irving loves life, but she can't escape a dark secret. All the principal characters appear to have nothing in common, except a stranger who enters their lives and wreaks havoc. Only in the book's final pages does the reader truly understand their connection and the root of their terror. Fraser succeeds in building an intricate, complex plot, but some may find the disjointedness of the narrative a bit confusing.

April 15, 2009
Three victims, each murdered twice, appear in disparate parts of England.

After James Markham jilts his fiance and marries Abigail, a woman he's known barely a week, the bride dies cutting down mistletoe. Callum Firbank loses his neighbor's son at a motorcycle rally, then dies in a car park several months later. Jill Irving, helping her third husband run a B&B, dies alone in a lovers' trysting place. The trio, widely separated geographically, have only a few things in common. All of them received picture postcards of the Lake District with no message on them, and all of them had their throats slashed and were then strung up and hanged. Tracking their nemesis is complicated by the fact that all the victims were exceedingly close-mouthed about their pasts. The tale has run half its course when the avenger pops around to describe a tragedy that befell his family over 20 years ago and lays the blame on Abigail, Callum and Jill. More deaths and a major plot twist will follow apace before all the facts are in and the story careens to an even more tragic conclusion.

Creepy and unsettling, although that final twist is a bit over the top for Fraser (Next Door to Murder, 2008, etc.), who's usually more circumspect.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 1, 2009
This taut psychological mystery begins with three brutal murders, three seemingly unrelated victims, and an elusive killer who leaves behind no evidence except for a postcard of the English Lake District placed with each victims body. The first third of the book describes the events leading up to each murder but leaves readers hanging as to the killers motive. Then, with consummate skill, Fraser begins revealing, via a series of flashbacks, the backstories of the three victims. It is only in the last quarter of the book that she finally reveals the identity of the killer and his motive for the brutal crimes. The focus is not so much on the crimes as it is on the psyches of the killer and his victims, and the tension builds relentlessly until the shocking conclusion. To reveal much more about the plot would be to deprive readers of a superbly crafted, riveting, page-turner of a read. A fine addition to Frasers ever-growing (and eclectic) body of work.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)