A Detective at Death's Door

A Detective at Death's Door
by H. R. F. Keating

A Detective at Death's Door
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Book Summary Information

Author: H. R. F. Keating
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Format: Large Print
Published: 2005-07
ISBN: 1843958481
Number of pages: 344
Publisher: Ulverscroft Large Print

Book Reviews of A Detective at Death's Door

Book Review: The title says it all.
Summary: 5 Stars

H R F Keating is a much-respected English writer, a champion for and skilled practitioner in detective fiction since the early 1960s. Most famous for his Inspector Ghote novels, he here adds another to a more recent series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Harriet Martens. It is Harriet Martens herself who is at death's door. She is a recovering victim of a serial poisoner who kills by slipping aconitine into his victims' drinks. Her recovery is slow and difficult but her determination to identify the killer is strong.
Keating pays generous homage to Dame Agatha Christie, who he knew personally, and attributes to her a novel she did not write, which gets its title from a line from Keats `Ode to Melancholy' - neither twist Wolfsbane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine.
The particular skill that I appreciate in Keating's novels is what I call his pacing. He allows plenty of time for "warming up" before slipping into top speed. Being a detective fiction reader who tends to forget what I read in the last chapter, I find Keating's books to be more "reader-friendly" than most.

Summary of A Detective at Death's Door

If Detective Harriet Martens's husband John hadn't been reading an Agatha Christie classic while the detective herself was sunning by the side of the club pool, she would have been dead before this story began. Unbeknownst to either of them, a killer had dropped a highly lethal addition into Harriet's cold drink. Struck by surprise to see the very symptoms of poisoning he'd been reading about, John was able to act---immediately!

Although he acted in time to save Harriet's life, she did not escape from the poisoning unscathed. She was bed-ridden for much too long a time before she was well enough to join in the search for her would-be murderer. But being imprisoned in bed gives one plenty of time to think, and Harriet soon realized that the attempt on her life was the initial move by an unknown who would soon earn the title of "serial killer." Even after there had been more murders, Harriet found it hard to convince her colleagues of this. They argued that the victims were too unrelated to each other; they did not know one another, had very different occupations, were widely apart socially and economically, and lived in neighborhoods scattered about the environs of the town. Except for the fact that they were English citizens, they had nothing in common.

Or---correction! They had nothing in common that Harriet's fellow police officers could see. But no one can say that Harriet is not tenacious. Once she is able to go about in person, if a bit shakily, she comes up with some helpful ideas. All the while, in the back of her mind, she knows that the killer, ego bruised, must be aching to finish what he or she started.

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