The Paradise Mystery by J.S. FletcherMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
In a different approach to the mystery genre, we (mostly) follow the perspective not of a detective, but of a skeevy young doctor who wants blackmail material that he can leverage. He has just been sacked by the doctor he was assisting because he refused to stop asking the doctor's ward to marry him, something she absolutely will not do - both she and her guardian have a sense that he's not a good guy, even though they have nothing specific against him, and indeed we learn that he is an amoral schemer. When a murder is committed and it looks to the younger doctor as if the older doctor may have committed it in order to keep a secret about his beautiful ward and her younger brother, the younger doctor starts poking around for evidence, and uncovers a sordid story from a couple of decades earlier involving bank embezzlement.
There's a police investigation going on at the same time, though, and the police are suspicious of the younger doctor, who was one of the first people on the murder scene, so they keep half an eye on him.
It turns out that a number of people who knew each other long ago have, by complete coincidence, converged on a small, sleepy cathedral city (modelled, I think, on Winchester, though called Wrychester) and encountered each other, with tragic results. Several of them are now living under different names, and untangling the whole thing takes hard detective work from multiple parties and involves several more deaths (and a couple of complete red herrings: (view spoiler)). Also, (view spoiler).
Although parts of the mystery are a bit of a cheat, the unusual point of view worked well for me, and the whole thing was entertaining.
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