A Safe Place to Die - Hardcover

Washington-based p.i. Anna Peters (Time Lapse, etc.) and artist husband Harry are guests of Isobel and Ken Browning in Branch Hill, Connecticut. Harry is having a show of paintings at the local gallery, owned by Sidonie Urson, a neighbor of the Brownings in lush Branch Hill Estates. Before the show's opening, the Ursons' teenaged daughter Lindsay is found clubbed to death near her home, apparently soon after saying goodnight to the Brownings' teenager Angela. Young Scott Cushing, grandson of Alex Valon, an old friend of Anna's, comes under suspicion--and after months go by with no arrest and a cloud still over Scott, Alex hires Anna to return to Branch Hill to try to resolve matters. By then, Sidonie and her husband Bradley have separated; Bradley's prot‚g‚ William Brighton, also a suspect, has moved into town; Angela has lost weight, seems frightened, and has invested all her energies in the Madrigal Society, run by gifted, flaky Peter Laurimer, who's also a magnet for another Estates dweller--sexy, promiscuous Miriam Greene. Not one of the neurotic people in this upscale Peyton Place seems real. Neither does motivation, method, or any subsequent action of the murderer, finally revealed. Anna herself provides the only substance here--but it's not enough to carry the blurry, disjointed plot or its burden of off-the-wall characters. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The specters of death and infidelity haunt the lush gardens and well-protected homes of exclusive Branch Hill, Conn., in the seventh case (after Time Lapse ) for New York City security expert Anna Peters. Accompanying her artist husband Harry to the opening of his show in a Branch Hill gallery, Anna finds herself trailing a killer after a teenaged girl is bludgeoned to death. Where the rich reside, troubled teenagers often abound and Peters is soon awash in adolescent angst: minor drug dalliances, nasty temper tantrums and plain janes languishing in the shadow of more precocious beauties. The local grownups seem a more stable lot, yet appearances can be deceptive; most manage an occasional flight from the marital yoke, and the community Madrigal Society, led by an overly artistic director, is beset by missing funds and the feud between a young singer and a senior diva-in-residence. A palpable sense of rural claustrophobia informs this mystery as escape from Branch Hill takes many diverse forms. A sharp-eyed, pleasant guide along these dark peculiar paths, Anna exhibits precious few eccentricities of her own.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.