Helpful Score: 3
A well-written contemporary British mystery. Main characters are a Scotland Yard detective and a highly-placed Civil Servant (with a romance between them). She, the civil servant, is a very interesting character, with a big family that adds some comic relief. Somewhat similar to Elizabeth George, but shorter books and a bit more simply written. Very enjoyable. It's a series, but I don't think it hurts to read them out of order, as the relationship has the same themes in all the books I've read.
If it weren't for John McLeish & Francesca Wilson, on a hiking holiday in the Highlands, veteran mountain climber Alan Fraswer might never have survived the 300-ft fall from the rock the locals called "The Wall.: As it was, Fraser escaped with no more than a bad fright & some nasty bruises. In three weeks he was fit enough to work at Vernon Engineering's big construction site in London, as foreman to a crew that included his best mountain-climbing partner-and rival-and a pair of hulking Irish brothers. But when one of the four fell from an 80-ft scaffolding tower onto a pile of steel pipes, there was nothng Detective Chief Inspector McLeish or anyone else could do to save him...What McLeish could do was smell murder--and with help from the well-connected Francesca & her irrepressible family, he would sort through a tangle of greed, scandal & unrequited love that reached from Scotland to London to the treacherous peaks of the Himalayas.
