Father Brown Book

Having recently read the newest Frank Smith, I had to go back to the beginning with "Fatal Flaw." Frank Smith does not waste a lot of words. His books are slim volumes that can be read quickly - mostly because they are so riveting.



DCI Neil Paget is a recent widower who has taken some tentative steps to getting back in the dating game with a beautiful doctor at the local hospital. However, she keeps some distance between them. He's not sure why. Like so many wonderful crime novels, you know that things are going to come together in a way that may or may not be satisfactory.



There are plenty of red herrings and possibilities. An astute reader knows that the apparent mugging of a stable hand is much more than meets the eye. The investigations begin with the apparent suicide of Monica, a 17-yr-old girl who has been living in a girls' boarding school since she was 11. The only enjoyment she seems to get is volunteering to help out at the local stables. Even there she is seen as clumsy and unlovable.



She had few friends, was known to be clumsy, and unable to bond. Her parents are divorced, and her father hasn't bothered with her for years. Neither has her mother. She had to stay behind in the school during Christmas because, ostensibly, her mother in the middle of important government conferences. (Wouldn't it have been nice if, like young Ebenezer Scrooge, she had a younger sibling who came to take her home!) Everyone seems to want her death to be tied up neatly as a suicide. However, first the new stable hand is found murdered. Then the second one is also murdered. Frank Smith has definitely made it to be "to be read" pile!