The
inimitable Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury returns in another
“literate, lyrical, funny, funky, discursive, bizarre” (The Washington Post) mystery, now with a tip of the derby to Alfred Hitchcock’s famous movie, Vertigo.
Richard Jury is meeting Tom
Williamson at Vertigo 42, a bar on the forty-second floor of an office
building in London’s financial district. Despite inconclusive evidence,
Tom is convinced his wife, Tess, was murdered seventeen years ago. The
inspector in charge of the case was sure Tess’s death was accidental—a
direct result of vertigo—but the official police inquiry is still an
open verdict and Jury agrees to re-examine the case.
Jury learns that a nine-year-old
girl fell to her death five years before Tess at the same country house
in Devon where Tess died. The girl had been a guest at a party Tess was
giving for six children. Jury seeks out the five surviving party guests,
who are now adults, hoping they can shed light on this bizarre
coincidence.
Meanwhile, an elegantly dressed
woman falls to her death from the tower of a cottage near the pub where
Jury and his cronies are dining one night. Then the dead woman’s
estranged husband is killed as well. Four deaths—two in the past, two
that occur on the pages of this intricate, compelling novel—keep Richard
Jury and his sidekick Sergeant Wiggins running from their homes in
Islington to the countryside in Devon and to London as they try to
figure out if the deaths were accidental or not. And, if they are
connected.
Witty, well-written, with literary references from Thomas Hardy to Yeats, Vertigo 42 is a pitch perfect, page-turning novel from a mystery writer at the top of her game.