The Poorly Detective (A Detective at Death's Door - H.R.F. Keating)

Member Name: CPTDANIELS

Product:	A Detective at Death's Door - H.R.F. Keating
Date:	04/05/09 (260 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Realistic and interesting story

Disadvantages: Little too easy and simplistic

Background:

To be honest I had never heard of H.R.F Keating until I stumbled upon his books in my local bookstore. I was surprised that I had never heard of him especially as he has written so many highly acclaimed books.

About the Author:

H.R.F Keating was born in Sussex on the 31st October 1926. He is probably best known for his crime fiction books that feature Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID. He has written in total 24 books using this detective. Of the other 30 books he has written six involve the Detective DCI Harriet Martens, who is the star of this book I'm reviewing A Detective at Death's Door.


About the Book:

This is the 5th of 6 so far featuring DCI Martens. In this book our star has been very fortunate to survive when her Campari Soda (Do people really still drink that?) is spiked with a poison called aconitine. Thanks to her husband John's quick thinking and actions she is saved and left to recover.

She is given three months off work by the Police Doctor to regain her strength. But following her near miss with death, her home town of Birchester is rocked by the death of one of its residents by similar poisoning.

So Harriet with the support of the Investigating Officer DS Pat Murphy starts to try and find the person responsible for these crimes, from her sick bed. This however proves very difficult as witnesses to this seem hard to find and those who do come forward seem to complicate matters.

Harriet must somehow use what strength she has to try and find this evil person so that the people of her town can consume their drinks in safety without fear of death.

My thoughts on the book:

When I purchased this book I did not realise this was the 5th out of 6 so far on this particular detective. Had I known I would have picked the first one in the series! However, it didn't really matter as it was easy to read and only made passing reference to her previous cases.

I love crime thrillers based in this country. Talking about incidents and places I can relate to. That and the title where the reason I bought this book in the first place. Recently I have reviewed many American authors and while the quality of their work was very good I found the English way of life easy in this book most enjoyable.

The authors writing style was excellent and I really enjoyed reading this book. I considered that the investigating officer Harriet would be at Death's Door to start with and then recover very quickly to full health. But I was impressed that her recovery was realistic and very slow. With set backs and uncertainties that the Detective faced shared with the reader throughout.

The storyline itself was very well written and I always wanted to read on to discover the truth. I wouldn't describe it as a page turner but it was a fascinating read. With some great characters created and marvellous interaction shared between them.

My only complaint with the story was it all seemed a little to simple and chance seemed to play quite a big part in Harriet getting on the right track when other members of the force where clearly down the wrong track. But I guess luck and chance are sometimes something required to solve cases, so maybe I shouldn't be too critical.

The author's writing style I did enjoy. I found his writing descriptive and easy to read. I liked the way her put humour into the book in places along with tongue in cheek thoughts and remarks.

The Chapters were all of a decent length about 10-12 pages each. This meant I could read a few chapters at any one sitting. With a useful explanation at the end of the book allowing the reader with any queries or anything they did not understand to have their queries answered.


Conclusion:

A very enjoyable read not fast paced it just flowed nicely. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys a good detective novel. It is clearly written by an experienced and very good author. I will definitely be looking to read another H.R.F. Keating novel probably the first in this series will be my next stop or should I save that for last!!

Published by Pan Books
Year of Publication: 2004
Pages: 263
ISBN: 0-330-43405-5
Price: New from Amazon £4.50
Second Hand from £0.30


Thanks for reading.

This review was also posted on Caio under my user name.

@CPTDANIELS May 2009

Summary: Recommended