Finished Th 12/11/14
Read in a couple of days- A Lew Archer novel from my collection, and John D. McDonald offers up the same type of thing, but so much, much better.
Three Murders over 20 years-
Daughter witnesses the murder of her mother when she was ten. Claims her father did it and he served ten years, and his reappearance is in the opening act and starts the action going.
Ten years prior to this, a rich man accidentally shots himself cleaning his handgun, or it's a suicide, or it's a murder.
A college counselor is killed and it might be the daughter or her father or somebody else.
To say that this is a wildly contrived plot is putting it mildly.
A college dean is living with his mother who is not his mother, but his wife whom he married when he was a student a college. They are living as mother and son because of the age difference and to conceal the fact that she is a murderess.
She killed they girl's mother because this woman was having an affair with her husband the dean.
She also killed the man who was cleaning his gun.
And she killed the college counselor because this woman was blackmailing her son the dean because she knew what was going on.
The book was not so much a mystery, but a mental exercise in keeping all of the characters straight and following the thread of the plot.
In the end the son/husband is killed in a car accident, and his wife/mother is driving the car that kills him. Lew Archer is their to pick up the pieces and deliver the old lady over to face justice.
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