The Drowning Pool (Willow King Mysteries)

Rating:
Summary: The sixth Willow King book is a good read!
Review: At forty-four years of age, romance writer Willow King gives birth to her first child. Her spouse, Scotland Yard Detective Tom Worth is delighted with his new daughter, but frets about Willow's health. Things turn nasty when Willow's obstetrician, Dr. Alexander Ringstead, is found dead in a nearby room. Tom should not have wasted his time worrying about his beloved wife's recovery from the complications she suffered from while giving birth. He should have worried about her starting a new investigation. As soon as Willow learns about the murder, the amateur sleuth gene inside her kicks in and she begins to investigate. ...... Willow soon finds a host of people with grudges with the deceased. Some of the suspects work at the hospital while others were victims of the womanizing doctor. As Willow digs deeper, she places herself and her newborn in danger from a killer, who will resort to anything, including murdering a new mother and her infant, to insure that the case remains unsolved. ..... The sixth Willow King mystery is a very good entry in the series due to the opportunity to see more into the personal lives of Willow, her spouse, and their housekeeper. Though the who-done-it is not quite at the level of the previous entries, it is better then most of the current books on the market. Natasha Cooper is an excellent mystery writer and her latest tale is quite good. However, if readers want a taste of quite great, try one of the previous entries. ......Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Mother Knight
Review: Over six novels, Natasha Cooper's Willow King has gone through more evolutions than the animals on the Galapogos Islands. Once a woman with a secret life -- British civil servant by day and glamorous romance novelist on the weekends -- she has since shed the bureaucracy, wedded a police officer, and opens "The Drowning Pool" by giving birth to her first child, at age 44, while her obstetrician is being unkindly murdered four doors down the hall.

Spending a week in the hospital (possible under Britain's National Health Service plan) gives her time to investigate, and soon uncovers a passel of suspects, including an administrator who had been at loggerheads with the doctor over budget cuts, the wife of a wealthy businessman the doctor was having an affair with, and a nurse whom he had fired.

The solution, however, seems marred by a motive and suspect tossed in from left field, and "The Drowning Pool" is wet-blanketed by King's worries over her responsibilities toward the baby, her relations with a husband who objects to her investigations, and the demands on once was her private and minutely controlled life. As an outrageously successful novelist who has, as a friend observed, a "stunning house, perfect and loyal housekeeper, health, brains, love, Superintendent Worth to attend to your every whim and now a baby as well," it's hard to feel sympathetic toward a woman who wonders if she is losing her identity. Most mothers I know would risk that and more to have a full-time housekeeper around to change the diapers.

Rating:
Summary: Not quite mediocre
Review: This is what I'd call a warm-fuzzy. The characters are all too nice to be believable and the mystery is lame.

I object most of all to the awkward way the author uses adjectives. In the first chapter alone we have "kindly patronage", "craggily handsome", "amazingly kind", "gloriously confidence-building" "refreshingly cool", "reassuringly unhysterical", "enormously luxurious", "achingly tired", "irresistably reminded", and "frightenly young". The whole book reads like someone told her to lengthen it by 8 pages, so she got out her list of adjectives and started plugging them in.

And how about, "Curiosity got the better of Willow's uncharacteristic yeilding to Tom's wish to protect her from herself." Please! Where was this writer's editor?