Amazon Editorial Review

The master of the classic British detective story -- the "modern-day version of Agatha Christie" (Booklist) -- returns with a stunning whodunit in her acclaimed series. Mystery fans will thrill as Inspector Luke Thanet unravels the intricate events leading up to the drowning of the wife of a renowned barrister.

When Thanet gets a late-night call, he fears the worst. His daughter Bridget has been suffering complications with her pregnancy. But it's only a call to inform him that Ralph Mintaur, a respected figure in courtrooms around Kent, has reported his wife missing while in the middle of an evening of entertaining. When Victoria Mintaur's body is discovered the next morning at the bottom of the well in the Mintaurs' garden, Thanet finds that almost all of the guests present at the house that evening had reason to want her dead. So with Detective Sergeant Mike Lineham at his side, he sifts through the complex webs of past and present in search of the truth.

Tantalizing and satisfying, meticulously plotted and vivid, Dead and Gone is another supreme example of Dorothy Simpson writing at the top of her game.

Releasing as a selection from the Mystery VBB, Happy Reading!

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Excited to find this in my mailbox. I will probably not get a chance to read it until after the Oxford Convention in April, but I am looking forward to it.

A really well-done British mystery series with believable recurring characters who solve the mysteries in believable ways with plenty of hard work. In this case, Thanet is called in when a local QC's wife goes missing in the middle of a pool party -- and is found dead in the well behind the house the next morning. The same woman had "lost" her daughter 4 years earlier when the girl eloped with the gardener. Are the two incidents related? No one thinks so, but Thanet is determined to find out, if only to get additional insight into the victim. There are a lot of solid suspects with varying motives and it is hard to know which way to lean -- and then the answer comes at last. Thanet complains that when the fingerprint is found which clinches the whole thing, his assistant Lineham doesn't tell him right away -- but Thanet/Simpson then keeps the reader waiting another chapter before revealing whose it is. Throughout the book, Thanet is preoccupied with his daughter who lies in the hospital being treated for preeclampsia and toxemia while awaiting the birth of her first child, so the whole book has an edge to it as you wait for shoe after shoe after shoe to drop. The conclusion of the entire book was satisfying without it being all neatly parceled up in a sugar-coating and reminded me again why I love this series.

Adding this to the Mystery VBB organized by bookstogive.

This book is on its way to SLC.

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Books arrived :) Thanks, 6! btw. love your release notes~

Read and enjoyed this summer, and have now passed to my sister, who will release in TX once she's read it . As 6of8 said, it is most definitely a keep you on the edge of your seat page-turner .

I very much enjoyed reading this book. I love a good mystery and this had a couple of them! Thanks, sis, for sharing this book! I will pass on here in Seguin, Texas. I think there are some mystery readers in my TOPS chapter. I will take to the next meeting and pass it on!!