A wife goes missing, and DCI Barnaby must find her.

 

Caroline Graham. Faithful Unto Death (1996) A woman disappears, then a ransom note from her kidnappers demands 50,000 pounds. Her husband apparently suicides, but a couple of oddities attract DCI Tom Barnaby’s attention. Murder it is. And so a well-done police procedural proceeds.
   Graham’s Barnaby is a lot like DCI Wexford, but his sidekick DS Tory is nothing like Wexford’s DI Mike Burden. Like Rendell, Graham has a sharp eye for human frailties and self-delusion, but a much more acid tongue. I get the impression that she would have preferred to write a comedie humaine: the crime and its investigation are a pretext for character analysis and moral commentary. She has the gift of making every sentence and paragraph count: apparently throw-way asides add to ambience, sharpen context, clarify relationships, shift point of view. A good read. ***