Death of an Expert Witness

[sawyl]

The sixth Dalgliesh novel Death of an Expert Witness immediately follows The Black Tower and precedes A Taste for Death, bringing me back to where I started my recent Jamesian readings and re-readings.

While investigating the murder of a young woman, Edwin Lorrimer, the senior forensic biologist at Hoggatt's Laboratory in Norfolk, is found brutally murdered in a locked lab. To prevent any possibility of compromise, Dalgliesh and Inspector John Massingham find themselves helicoptered into investigate the death. They soon learn that Lorrimer was a prickly and difficult perfectionist, with a gift for rubbing people up the wrong way. Add to that a series of murky goings on at the lab and the two detectives find themselves confronted with no shortage of suspects, both from the lab and from the local community, who might have wished to bump Lorrimer off.

In general, Death of an Expert Witness works rather well once you get over the McGuffin of the initial murder, which only really serves to introduce the main characters and their working environment. Although Lorrimer initially appeared to be a pretty unsympathetic character, the investigation revealed hitherto hidden facets of kindness, and provided plausible explanations for his perfectionism and his horror of failure. I also rather liked Brenda Pridmore, the young receptionist whose enthusiasm for science both captures the imagination of others and, I rather hope, provides her with a way to escape her family's intentions that she should marry herself off to a local boy at the first possible opportunity and settle down to be a good little housewife.

As to the mystery, I don't mind admitting that it kept me guessing until the last. Not as so much as to who had done it or how, but very much as to why — probably because I was diverted by all the red herrings and asides James so neatly deploys.

Most satisfactory.