KING OF HEARTS: A Cassandra Swann Bridge Mystery - Hardcover

A chance notice that her late father's namesake, Handsome Harry III, is running in the Grand National makes Bellington bridge pro Cassandra Swann buckle down to solve his decades-old murder. The official story is that Handsome Harry was stabbed in a fight that broke out in front of his pub, but Cassie, questioning the surviving witnesses--one concerned party gets fatally stabbed herself before Cassie can get to her--becomes convinced that her father's killing, and maybe the fight itself, was choreographed in advance. Meantime, there's present-day crime as well, as the hate campaign against Dr. Sammi Ray and his wife escalates from nasty notes and nastier parcels shoved through the door to murder. Or is the official story here wrong as well, with racial baiting only a front for ne'er-do-well actor son Rashid's strangling of his disapproving father? With minimal encouragement from her lover, Sgt. Paul Walsh, who can't even decide whether he's still married, Cassie wraps up both cases--one with a neatly unexpected solution, the other a surprise only to Cassie. Cassie's third case (Grand Slam, 1995, etc.) shows continued warmth and ingenuity--and the heroine's continued inability to tear herself loose from the demons of her previous books. Bridge fans will miss any glimpse of Cassie at the table; she might just as well be a steamfitter this time out. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In her third appearance, following Take-Out Double, British bridge expert and amateur sleuth Cassandra Swann pursues an investigation that hits very close to home. Discouraged by her failure at dieting and uncertain of her relationship with police officer Paul Walsh, Cassandra continues to conduct evening bridge classes at a nearby school. There the enrollment of an Indian couple, the Drs. Sammi and Vida Ray, captures the interest of Cassandra and a friend, who come to suspect Vida is being physically abused. Meanwhile, a horse named Handsome Harry comes in third in the Grand National. When Cassandra was a young girl, her pub-owner father, called Handsome Harry, had been fatally stabbed in a brawl and the person responsible never identified. Cassandra learns that the owner of the horse had been one of her father's female companions; her curiosity and sense of loss reawakened, she begins to investigate the death of her father, known also as the King of Hearts. Moody offers a vibrant cross section of English social strata in such characters as coarse-mannered Charlie Quartermain, Cassandra's ardent admirer, and country gentlewoman Brigid Fraser, who uses phrases like NOSD ("not our sort, dear"). References to the game of bridge are few, but Moody's characterization is utterly winning and her story's conclusion a sure slam.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.