Sunday, May 16, 2010

Silent Scream-Lynda La Plante

Silent Scream
Lynda La Plante
Touchstone, Jul 6 2010, $15.00
ISBN 9781439139288

Twenty something movie star Amanda Delany is a favorite of the paparazzi and tabloids as she always makes infamous news with drugs and sex. When a publisher offers a ton of money for a tell-all titivating autobiography, Amanda accepts the offer. However, before she can write her exposé, someone murders her in her Belgravia mews house that she had occupied for only eight weeks.

Detective Inspector Anna Travis leads the police investigation knowing the unscrupulous media will do anything including interfering and intruding on her inquiry to gain a scoop. However, the crime scene provides no useful information. Worse motives are galore as Anna trafficked in drug and man usage as she was a serial marriage destroyer and then there is the memoir. With the media clamoring for instant results, Anna’s former lover and a previous direct reports supervisor Detective Chief Superintendent James Langton demands she resolve the case yesterday even as a financial scam surfaces that adds a potential monetary motive to the complex case.

In her fifth case, Travis is terrific as she shows little growth as an investigator from her previous cases like Deadly Intent; yet is up for a promotion as the Peter Principle apparently is winning out. Her somewhat early ineptitude enhances a fun whodunit though the culprit will be easily identified by readers much earlier than the cops do. Silent Scream is an entertaining British police procedural starring a cop who may have risen above her skill level yet remains confident in her abilities to stride for a promotion.

Harriet Klausner

No comments: