This image is the cover for the book Dead and Gone, Inspector Luke Thanet Novels

Dead and Gone, Inspector Luke Thanet Novels

Serious crime isn't supposed to happen in elegant English country homes, especially not in such families as that of Queen's counsel Ralph Mintar, a prominent barrister who's destined to become a high-court judge.
So it's particularly shocking when Mintar's attractive wife, Virginia, goes missing just after a small dinner party. Her disappearance is eerily reminiscent of the day four years before, when the Mintars' adult daughter Caroline left the house, never to return.
Caroline seems to have vanished off the face of the earth, but Virginia's body is soon found at the bottom of a garden well, and Inspector Luke Thanet and his partner, Sergeant Mike Lineham, who are called in to investigate, quickly discard any idea of accidental death. Virginia was the perfect murder victim. Her outrageous flirting made her many enemies, several of whom were there on the night of her death. They had both reason and opportunity to kill her, but which one took the final, fatal step? Who wanted Virginia dead and gone?
Who was Virginia's latest lover? What does her mother-in-law have to hide? What about Caroline's younger sister and her womanizing fiancé? Thanet and Lineham wonder how they can even begin to unravel the morass of family secrets that complicate this case.
Distracted by his own daughter Bridget's dangerous pregnancy and pushed by his boss to find hard evidence in this high-profile homicide, Luke Thanet feels pressured as never before as he probes into the life and death of one of the most poignant and, finally, shocking cases of his career.
Always a skilled mistress of the classic British crime novel, award-winning author Dorothy Simpson is at the top of her form in this powerful novel of family love gone tragically wrong.

Dorothy Simpson

Dorothy Simpson (b. 1933) was born and raised in South Wales, and went to Bristol University, where she studied modern languages before moving to Kent, the setting for her Inspector Thanet Mysteries. After spending several years at home with her three children, she trained as a marriage guidance counselor and subsequently worked as one for thirteen years before writing her first novel. Says Simpson, “You may think that marriage guidance counselor to crime writer is rather a peculiar career move, but although I didn’t realize it at the time, of course, the training I received was the best possible preparation for writing detective novels. Murder mysteries are all about relationships which go disastrously wrong, and the insights I gained into what makes people tick, into their interaction and motivations, have been absolutely invaluable to DI Thanet, my series character, as have the interviewing skills I acquired during my years of counseling.”
 

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