The Manx Murders: A Professor Niccolo Benedetti Mystery - Hardcover

It's hard to stay busy when you're a philosopher of evil whose theories are based exclusively on the face-to-face study of serial killers, so it's not surprising when Professor Niccolo Benedetti (The Werewolf Murder, 1992, etc.) intervenes in the feud between Clyde and Henry Pembroke, twin government contractors who can't agree to release specifications on a revolutionary new smokescrubber one of their employees has invented. Benedetti's initial reluctance to intercede--overcome when he hears that somebody has mysteriously driven all the birds from bird-watching Henry's estate--presumably indicates that he knows what his creator, despite his protests to the contrary, has evidently forgotten: This case is outside his bailiwick. Fortunately, the banishing of the birds is followed by events the professor feels more at home with when Clyde is kidnapped and killed by a coy abductor, who strangles him less than an hour before his ice-cream maker nephew Chip arrives with the million-dollar ransom--and then doesn't even touch the money. One more last-minute murder, one adorable cat (brother Henry, of course, is a cat fancier), and no more mystery will follow. If you're counting clues, you'll find this puzzle ingenious, fair (almost too fair--it's easier to solve than the average crossword), but also so thinly imagined, it's instantly forgettable. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Even if Niccolo Benedetti, professor and self-styled expert on "Human Evil," often seems to be an agile, Mediterranean Nero Wolfe, this series remains notable for the ingenuity of DeAndrea's plotting and the quiet assurance of his prose. This latest case, following The Werewolf Murders , features several odd birds. The twin Pembroke brothers have lived all their lives together in rural Pennsylvania, amassing a fortune and occasionally feuding. Clyde loves bird watching; Henry raises and breeds tailless Manx cats. Both loved the same girl once, but Henry married her, and now his son Chip is building up an ice cream empire. The brothers have invented an air-cleaning device, but Clyde, whose beloved birds have fled the family estates (where a mysterious grape odor lingers in the still, birdless air), stands in the way of its manufacture. The mystery of the missing birds becomes the case of the abducted brother and then the case of the dead secretary. Niccolo, who also paints and likes to embellish his witty utterances with the occasional Italian flourish, does the intellectual digging, while PI Ron Gentry and his psychologist wife, Janet, take care of the grunt work. The threesome makes a charming team in this agreeably nutty case.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.