Til Death Do Us Part

April 1, 2013
Set in 1828 Lincolnshire, Fraser’s fifth Constable Thomas Potts mystery (after 2011’s Suffer the Children) has its moments, but not enough of them to draw in newcomers with no emotional investment in the characters. Potts’s marriage to barmaid Amy Danks gets off to a bad start at their wedding reception when his crotchety mother accuses him of wanting to send her to the poorhouse. The ongoing tension between the two women in his life makes attending to his constable duties a welcome relief. Potts has to solve some less-than-compelling puzzles, involving scam artists using personal advertisements to bilk women out of their savings and dogs being kidnapped and killed for their pelts, among others. The frequent interior monologues come off as calculated speechifying but Fraser (the pen name of Roy Clews) does a nice job of describing the seamier aspects of early 19th-century English life, although he doesn’t put enough in front of that backdrop.