Dr. Henry Maitland was involved in a car accident in which his wife was killed. He survived, but is confined to a wheelchair. He hopes that David will be able to alleviate some of the stress of running a rural practice where legs are an obvious asset.

Three years pass and David has become accustomed to life as a GP as well as a good friend of Henry’s. Both men are reluctant to talk about their past lives, but seem to maintain a relatively cheerful existence tending to the health of Manham’s residents. Then tragedy strikes. The corpse of a young woman is discovered by two young boys out playing in the woods. The woman has apparently been dead for some time so identification is difficult. Finally the dead woman is identified as Sally Palmer a woman writer who lived alone on a small farm holding

Chief Inspector Mackenzie, in charge of the case, appears on David’s doorstep asking for help with the determination of Ms. Palmer’s time of death. He has learned that when David was in London he had worked as a forensic anthropologist, a career he had abandoned when his wife and six-year-old daughter were killed in a car accident. David is reluctant to help since death has become a personal issue for him, but is goaded into sharing his expertise. Mackenzie respects David’s desire to keep his former profession under wraps, but when a second young woman is abducted, David, as an outsider in a close knit village, becomes a suspect in the minds of the villagers.

What could be described as serial killer loose in small English village would be a gross misnomer in summarizing The Chemistry of Death. Not only are the fascinating methods of determining time of death of individuals as well as other aspects of forensic science accurately and tastefully described, but a clear sense of place, atmosphere, and emotion are portrayed without excess verbiage or overworked scenarios.

Simon Beckett has taken great care in his word selection to accurately produce a vivid picture of the small Norfolk village of Manham. To whit, “Surrounded by woodland, boglike fens and poorly drained marshland, it was a literal as well as figurative backwater. Apart from the occasional birdwatcher the village was left to itself, sinking further into its isolation like an antisocial old man.” His characters are equally well portrayed. Speaking of Mackenzie as he strides across the field, Beckett states, “With that he turned and walked away, his shadow chasing him like a black dog at his heels.”

The author does a magnificent job of maintaining tension and only gradually revealing information about his characters. As the book opens, the reader knows nothing about David Hunter except that he is trying to escape from an unpleasant situation in London. Slowly we come to understand what he did in his former career and why he felt he had to leave the city. Bit by bit he builds up the undercurrent of tension that is increasing among the villagers as they become afraid of the murderer in their midst.

One plot device that Beckett overworks is the ending of a chapter with a sense of foreboding or foreshadowing For example, David tells us, “In the coming days I would look back on this afternoon as one last glimmer of blue sky before the storm.” Of course, that sentence propels the reader forward onto the next chapter to find out what the storm is, and he chooses his words carefully, but the plot device itself is oft used.

The novel is written well. The author drops clues which allow the astute reader to solve the mystery, without making it too obvious. There are enough red herrings to draw most readers away from the real perpetrator, but it is comforting to go back after the story is done and reread the passages that would have certainly lead to unmasking the murderer if the reader is clever enough to see them. I must admit that I was not.

David Hunter is a unique character and perfectly defined for this novel. The Chemistry of Death should be on many best lists of 2006.

--Andy Plonka