A Sprig of Sea Lavender (Piet Deventer Investigations, #1)

by J.R.L. Anderson

Up-and-coming painter, Sandra Telford, races down the platform to catch her train to London.Two hours later she's found dead at her seat. At her feet is a portfolio containing millions of pounds worth of unlisted artwork - and a single sprig of sea lavender.Inspector Piet Deventer, an art lover himself, is put on the case. The victim is the former lover of an escaped convict, the mastermind behind one of the largest gold robberies of the century - and Piet suspects the two cases might be connected.Struggling for leads, Piet enlists the help of Sally Graham, a friend of the victim, to help with his investigation. But with a dangerous criminal on the loose, Piet will need all his wits about him - so it doesn't help that he finds himself falling in love . . .A Sprig of Sea Lavender is J.R.L. Anderson's first mystery featuring Piet Deventer, and is an unmissable read for all lovers of English crime.

• ISBN10: 0312753772
• ISBN13: 9780312753771
• Publish Date: 1 January 1979
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 18 March 2014
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St. Martin's Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 176
• Language: English

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

I bought this a few years ago, when Otto Penzler was selling his collection through his bookshop, Mysterious Books.  It's a review copy of an author I'd never heard of, but the short catalog blurb made it sound interesting: mysterious death on a train, unknown works by Gainsborough, Turner and Constable found with the body, along with a  sprig of - you guessed it - sea lavender.

This is a mid-century mystery, and it suffered from the usual quirks of that age:  instant, yet chaste, romance, and a complete disregard of the fair-play rules of mystery plotting.  As such, the reader, by the end, is presented with a fait accompli in both the romance and the mystery's resolution, without having any idea whatsoever how the main character got there, although he does explain it all at the very end.

By today's standards, it's all a bit thin, naive and 2 dimensional, but I had fun with it nevertheless.  It wasn't trying to be anything other than an entertaining mystery and, while I've read others that are greater successes, it generally achieved its goal.