The Rich Detective - Softcover

Keating's latest mystery is a sophisticated work: a slice of edgy crime fiction that hints at dark obsessions percolating beneath the surface of William Sylvester, a detective inspector with South Mercia CID. Often the butt of his colleague's jokes, Bill is a resolute, miserly, somewhat lonely chap. He lives for the hunt, taking the occasional break for Jude, a kindly whore, and a Spanish holiday. While on the latter he buys a lottery ticket and wins a million quid. Suddenly his solitary life changes. The old leather jacket looks a shade beat up. But more important, his unease with his superiors becomes intolerable. Sylvester is convinced that antique dealer Charles Roanoke is a killer, separating several wealthy nursing-home residents from their fortunes, then mysteriously killing them off. But proving the influential Roanoke's guilt from within the force is hard. Proving it after resigning becomes an exercise in almost deranged determination that Keating ( Dead on Time ) masterfully depicts. There are comic asides (a couple of would-be victims prove stubborn, refusing either to die or to fork over their resources), but for the most part events are somber and endlessly frustrating as Bill adjusts to a new life of leisure, with the core of his daily existence ripped out of him.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Keating's last Inspector Ghote novel (The Iciest Sin) focused on the ethics of detection; this ironic tale goes still further in exploring the obsession of Detective Inspector Bill Sylvester, who investigates an anonymous tip that polished antiques-dealer Charles Roanoke has killed three nursing-home residents for the money he's inveigled them into leaving him. Despite increasingly fervent warnings from Supt. Sugden, the Big White Chief, to lay off well-connected Roanoke, Sylvester continues to work on the case even after a fabulous lottery prize leaves him wealthy and piques him into quitting the force. Edging further and further outside the law himself, he tracks down a fourth victim, identifies a potential fifth, and sets a series of elaborate traps for Roanoke, whose costly failure is still less disastrous than the success Sylvester seems fated to endure. All the dry-eyed penetration of an English Simenon, coupled with Keating's usual sly humor: a treat not to be missed. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.