The Saint Valentine's Day Murders
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Life in a dismal bureaucratic cul-de-sac is not what Robert Amiss expects when the British civil service lends him for a year to the British Conservation Corporation. In fact, he finds himself condemned to a non-job in a backwater, managing disgruntled and demoralized timeservers who deeply resent him. Morale is not improved by the arrival of Melissa, a radical feminist lesbian separatist. Only Amiss's sense of humour and the joys of visiting Rachel, his new love in Paris, keep him sane.
The malice, envy and anger that burgeons among the filing cabinets is first expressed in pettiness and then in unpleasant practical jokes. Then it escalates and finally culminates in callous murder by means of boxes of poisoned chocolates sent to the bureaucrats' wives.
With the help of Ellis Pooley, a young detective obsessed with fictional sleuths, Amiss and his friend, Superintendent Milton, search for motives in an office where marital discord and broken dreams might drive anyone to murder.
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Ruth Dudley Edwards is a historian and journalist as well as a mystery writer. The targets of her satirical crime novels include the gentlemen's clubs, Cambridge University, the House of Lords, journalism and literary prizes. The British Crime Writers' Association short-listed Corridors of Death for the John Creasy Award for best first novel, and Clubbed to Death and Ten Lords A-Leaping for their Last Laugh Award. She won the CrimeFest Last Laugh Award for Murdering Americans in 2008 and in 2010 the CWA Non-fiction Gold Dagger for Aftermath: the Omagh bombings and the families' pursuit of justice. Her twelfth mystery, Killing the Emperors, is a black comedy about conceptual art.
