At a party to celebrate her divorce, a woman is given a voodoo doll of her husband as a joke gift. Egged on by her friends she sticks a pin through the heart hoping that he might suffer the same heartache his philandering ways caused her. It’s all a bit of a laugh until the next day when her husband turns up dead-a stake through his heart-and she’s the prime suspect.
Though entirely innocent, events conspire against her. As the circumstantial evidence builds she begins to doubt the police are investigating the case as thoroughly as they might and so she hires a detective to prove her innocence.
Eventually she manages to clear herself but only by incriminating an acquaintance who is then arrested for the murder.
It is only through chance that she then discovers who the true murderer was and manages to free the wrongly arrested man and see justice done.
This book is light, mindless fluff-and I enjoyed it!
Sure, on occasion the heroine does some fairly dumb things on particularly flimsy motivation. And okay, I saw many of the red herrings for what they were a mile off. But I must have been in the exact right frame of mind while reading because instead of being irritated by these things I was amused by them.
The only disappointment was the ending. The twist at the end was entirely out of left field-no hint was given anywhere throughout the story of the turn things were going to take. This was quite common during the early days of crime writing (think Agatha Christie) and is something I really don’t like in a modern work. It somehow feels like cheating to me. A good writer can give hints all the way through a story and still pull of a surprise ending. As a reader I like to be able to look back at all the little things that suddenly make sense after a reveal. This book left me thinking WTF happened there.
But in spite of the ending I enjoyed the story. I wouldn’t say a categorical no to other works by this author.-Lynn
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