A Review by Carolyn McKenzie

 

“For Murder Press 3” by P M A Hayes

How well do you know your neighbours?

How closely are the threads of your life interwoven with theirs?

If the answer to the first is “Not as well as you think” and to the second is “Far more than you imagined”, any small town will be thrown into turmoil by a brutal crime. “For Murder Press 3” is set in Seagrove, somewhere in New Zealand and peopled with a cross-section of characters who typically make up a small-town community. In Seagrove, neighbours do look out for each other, some of them out of friendly concern, while others are watching for the chance to do their neighbours a mischief. When Francine Roydon is found murdered, her estranged husband, Aldo, realises he is a prime suspect and engages a private investigator, Benedict Aberthorp, to help him prove his innocence.

Aberthorp’s work normally involves cheating spouses and this is his first murder. Although he keeps Aldo in his sights as a suspect, he quickly discovers more and more people who may have wanted Francine dead. As he begins to untangle the threads that bind all these people together, he finds that some of the bonds stretch back several decades. Cloud the issue with alcohol, cheating spouses and several people trying furtively to pin the murder on their neighbour, and Hayes has written an engaging “whudunnit” where the virtues of a small, caring community are offset by the inevitable intrigues of people living too closely together, especially when there are secrets to keep hidden at all costs. The book’s title refers to a message that one of Francine’s neighbours has received: is it a clue or a diversion? Hayes’s story surges along, keeping Aberthorp working at a cracking pace as the plot twists and turns. Unravelling the clues that fully explain the meaning of the message “For Murder Press 3” was a real brain teaser that kept me guessing to the very end.

The Book’s cover promises more Benedict Aberthorp and I’m looking forward to his next challenge.