The Borough Treasurer by J.S. FletcherMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Two prosperous businessmen run a building company in partnership in a small town in the north of England.
One is serving his second term as mayor; the other has been borough treasurer for six years, and his daughter is about to marry a wealthy local man with a bright political future.
But, completely by coincidence, a man comes to the town who remembers the pair from 400 miles away and 30 years ago, when (under different names) they were convicted of embezzling from the building society of which they were secretary and treasurer. With so much to lose, they have two options: give in to blackmail which might never stop, or... ensure he never tells anyone.
The blackmailer dies - but who killed him, and why? Being a J.S. Fletcher book, it doesn't always go in the direction I was expecting, except of course for the two very lightly sketched romances with women who barely appear in the story and certainly don't get much characterisation. There's no single detective; the one we follow most is a young barrister, the friend of the borough treasurer's prospective son-in-law (which adds its own layer of complication), but he doesn't solve the whole mystery by himself. It's a largish ensemble cast, many of them minimally developed.
The biggest weakness for me was the abundance of evidence, most of it produced by coincidence and then suppressed for reasons. An encounter on a supposedly deserted moor is witnessed by at least three people. The one document a murderer would want most to suppress is the one that falls out of the victim's pocketbook, to be found by someone with a motive to conceal it. People keep happening to be in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time. (view spoiler)
For me, the plot loses its way (despite, or maybe because of, the abundant coincidence), and the characters are underdeveloped. It's one of Fletcher's less successful books from my point of view. He didn't write conventional detective stories, which is great, but sometimes the way in which his books are original is more a weakness than it is a strength, and this is one of those times.
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