A Welsh
antiques dealer is lured to a museum near a small town in Wales and murdered
with what is eventually determined to be an old German handgun from the World
War II period. Little can be gleaned from the crime scene; the murder happens
at night and there are no witnesses.
Suspects
abound. As Detective Inspector Ian Drake and Detective Sergeant Sara Morgan of
the North Wales Police Service investigate, they soon learn that the killer
might be the victim’s wife, his common law wife, a gangster who deals in
antique thefts, any one of a number of people protesting a local development
project, and several other people.
Drake has
a set of personal problems. He’s recently divorced and trying to stay in the lives
of his two daughters. Politics in the police force always threatens to
interfere with investigations, including this one. And Drake is an
obsessive-compulsive when it comes to cleanliness, germs, the cleanliness of
his car, and the orderliness of his desk. He’s a good investigator, but he behaves
almost automaton-like, until he meets a history professor during the
investigation. DI Ian Drake starts falling in love and the romance saves the
man (and the reader from getting aggravated).
These are
the people and this is the world of A
Time to Kill by Welsh writer Stephen
Puleston.
 |
| Stephen Puleston |
Puleston
publishes two series of Welsh police detective stories. Detective Inspector Ian
Drake is with the North Wales Police Service, and Detective Inspector John Marco
is with the South Wales Police Service. A
Time to Kill is the fifth DI Ian Drake mystery.
Other
killings begin to happen, and Drake and Morgan find themselves in a race
against the killer’s next victims. The motive, as it is often is, is buried in
the past but wrapped in events in the present.
A Time to Kill is a good story; Puleston writes
consistently good police mysteries. One minor oversight: we don’t learn Sara Morgan’s
last name until almost a fifth of the way through the story, with her first
name as the only reference. It’s a small thing, and fortunately doesn’t detract
from the high quality of the overall story.
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photograph by Nick Scheerbart via Unsplash. Used with
permission.
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