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Fizz Fitzpatrick and Tam Buchanan are friends, colleagues, sometimes adversaries, but always make a good team. When Fizz stalks Tam on the golf course, she tells him she has heard that his boss, affectionately known as Larry the Bastard is on vacation, she figures the mice, including Tam, will be out to play. She tells him that an old friend from her art school days, Irene Lloyd, has disappeared. Irene's partner Kerr has contacted Fizz and asks for her help. He says he has heard that she is good at that sort of thing. The fact is this: Fizz and Tam are good at finding people and solving mysteries. But Tam has a demanding boss now and if he wants to make his mark in the legal world, he has to toe the line. Fizz has no such compunctions about Tam or his free time and she insists that they go to Abbeyfield House, the stately but impoverished manor where Irene and Kerr are employed. To add to the problem of Irene's disappearance is a further complication which suddenly came to light -- a painting by Rubens is also missing. Irene was the curator of the few works of art still belonging to the house and although this was a minor work of the master, it was still valuable. Irene was cleaning the painting for its eventual sale to a wealthy American. Everyone knows that Sir Douglas and his sister Lady Marjory need the funds to try to keep the old manor house from falling into ruins. While questioning the other employees at the manor, Tam meets Eddie the gardener. Since a person could be forgiven for thinking that Eddie the Gardener was male, Fizz is unaware that Eddie is a lovely she and Tam is finding many excuses to question the young lady. Fizz has been independent since her teen years and says she enjoys the unencumbered life, but there are undercurrents to the relationship between the pair of erstwhile detectives. Fizz personally feels she has saved Tam from the wrong women any number of times. The two characters nicely complement each other in their diverse ways. Fizz is a determined young woman who has made her own way in the world since being raised by her grandfather on a Scottish farm in the Highlands. Tam has had more advantages than Fizz, but he lacks her commonsense and she would say he is too soft. This is possibly the ninth or tenth book in the series, and it is still fresh and new as it was in the beginning. While the action may have a cozy or even a Golden Age feel to it, make no mistake these are a modern twosome and the crooks are very contemporary.
Reviewed by Lorraine Gelly, March 2005
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