Garve may have started as a straight mystery novelist but by 1976 he had become infected with the Symons/Vickers virus and started to explore the fringes of the genre. Luckily he retained enough writing talent to create a fairly entertaining work, but along the way, alas, he seems to have forgotten one of the basic rules of mystery writing: a mystery needs a solution.
The book is told in the first person by Walter Haines, a detective novelist. His wife is seduced by Max Ryland, who insults, abuses and estranges her, and is shortly afterwards found murdered. Several preliminary chapters describe how Haines met and married his wife and subsequently lost her. We have read this sort of thing a hundred times before in Symons and elsewhere. It adds nothing to the mystery.
The plot only begins to get off the ground after Ryland's murder, nearly halfway through the book. Ryland is found in his seaside cottage, stabbed with such ferocity that his kitchen knife is impaled in the floorboards through his body. The time of the murder is determined by the time he was seen leaving his house in London, two hours away. Haines, the obvious suspect, has a perfect alibi: that evening he flew out from London to Portugal, an hour after Ryland was seen leaving his house. Suspicion begins to focus on Tim Burrows, whose girlfriend Ryland had also seduced. Superintendent Maude takes Burrows into custody: then Haines, concerned at Burrows' plight, drops a bombshell -- he was the murderer after all.
He explains in detail how it was done, and not content with the explanation, Maude makes him do it all again with a stopwatch. It's a brilliant plan: and, yes, it would have worked. Trouble is, Tim Burrows has also made a confession; and his is equally plausible. Will Maude make a brilliant deduction which breaks the deadlock? Will it turn out that the two suspects are in cahoots? Will it be someone else altogether? What will happen?
What happens, at this moment of supreme crisis, is precisely nothing. In an appalling display of authorial cowardice, Garve brings the story to an abrupt end. We are told that Haines will get back with his wife -- which doesn't matter. We are not told whodunnit, which does. D Minus, Mr Garve, for violating such a fundamental rule. You are wasting your talent. Go back and do it again properly.
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