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Hines, Joanna - 'The Murder Bird'
Paperback: 384 pages (Mar. 2007) Publisher: Pocket Books ISBN: 0743468732

Poetess Kirsten Waller is dead, found electrocuted in her bath in a remote cottage in Cornwall. The inquest verdict is suicide. Only her daughter Sam refuses to accept this. Kirsten's ex-husband, the barrister Raph Howes who is now living with the voluptuous Lola, tries to convince Sam. So too does her father Davy Boswin and his wife Linda.

The problem is that Sam knows her mother kept a journal and was working on a poem "the murder bird" and both are missing. Invited down to the splendid manor house of Wardley, home to Raph's sister Miriam and her husband Johnny, they are sympathetic, as too is Raph and Miriam's mother Diana, but none share Sam's conviction.

A chance encounter with Raph's law pupil Mick Brady provides the help Sam needs. As Sam investigates the people connected with her mother, she puts herself into danger as she searches for the proof. Sam a talented cello player and sufferer of vertigo attacks risks all to prove her mother's death was murder, but was it?

This is a psychological thriller, fast paced with believable characters. It very much concentrates on the results of violent fathers/husbands and acquiescing mothers/wives. As a backdrop it uses a court case of a woman accused of murdering her violent husband and defended by Raph and Mick.

Read another review of THE MURDER BIRD.

Geoff Jones, England
April 2007



last updated 25/08/2007 16:54