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.).