Now it's on to the work of Douglas Clark whose Scotland Yard detective team of George Masters and William Green specialize in difficult cases involving medical or pharmaceutical issues. Although Masters and Green initially dislike and irritate each other, the team is so successful that the Yard won't break them up. I don't have all the books, so I'll just go with the ones I have, published from about 1970 into the 1990s.
2 Dec 2024
Masters and Green are called in to investigate the sudden death of a young diabetic woman in Sick To Death. Otherwise healthy, the woman suddenly went into a diabetic coma and died overnight; when her insulin supply was found to be useless, the team is called in to investigate. Grade: B.
4 Dec 2024
A popular resident dies of poisoning at the house of the most hated man in a tight suburban neighborhood in Premedicated Murder, and Masters and Green are called in to solve it. Although the unpopular man is the universal choice as murderer, he had no motive. But who did? I felt the plot of this one was a bit far fetched. Grade: B.
6 Dec 2024
When the third member of a secure British government research facility dies in a mountaineering accident in Dread And Water, it looks as if the deaths of two other scientists from the same department in similar circumstances also might not have been accidents. Masters and Green have to detect a highly unusual murder weapon. Grade: A.
10 Dec 2024
Table D'Hote finds the team of Masters and Green on the verge of finally splitting up; their two sergeants have moved on to promotions, and William Green is two years away from retirement. He's been given permission to look for another assignment, but nobody wants to take on an officer that close to retiring. Perversely, he now decides he wants to stay, and George Masters keeps him on to tackle the case of a doctor's wife who has died unexpectedly under suspicious circumstances. Grade: A.
13 Dec 2024
On their way to investigate the sudden death of the senior partner in a firm of real estate agents and auction brokers in The Gimmel Flask, Masters reveals that he scents local corruption as well as murder. On thing I like about this series is that it allows for the gradual evolution of the relationship between Masters and Green. They still irritate each other from time to time, but by this point they are functioning with much more mutual respect. Grade: A.
16 Dec 2024
When their car breaks down near an abandoned church, Masters and Green poke around in the churchyard while their sergeants go for help in Heberden's Seat. Naturally, their exploration leads them to discover a dead body in the churchyard well. I felt the plot of this one didn't hang together too well and the solution was pretty obvious. Grade: B.
18 Dec 2024
The man Masters' mother-in-law, Bella, intended to marry has died of a heart attack after being shot by a poacher in Poacher's Bag. The local police have arrested the poacher and and are satisfied with their case, but Bella is not; she wants Masters and Green to investigate the matter. They are reluctant to "poach" on the locals' turf, and must proceed diplomatically. Grade: B.
19 Dec 2024
The popular headmistress of a posh girls' school dies suddenly of poisoning from seeds of the laburnum tree in Golden Rain. A cursory investigation by the local police fails to reveal how she might have ingested the seeds, so Masters and Green's team is called in by the local bigwigs. Grade: B.
21 Dec 2024
Hatred is said to be The Longest Pleasure. When a rare type of botulism breaks out in four different parts of England, the authorities assume foul play and assign Masters and Green to track down the source. This one is a cracking good read; the suspense is so good that in spite of the fact that I've read it several times before, it still kept me up most of the night. Grade: A+.
31 Dec 2024
I read four books over the holidays, so I'll do them all at once.
An intoxicated young hoodlum is taken into police custody and dies in a jail cell overnight from an unusual intoxicant in Shelf Life. Complicating matters is the fact that he is the father of the duty sergeant's daughter's unborn baby. That's enough to get Masters and Green's team called in to sort matters out. Grade: B.
An even more unusual situation occurs in Roast Eggs, when Masters is appealed to by an old barrister friend; he's in the middle of prosecuting a murder case and fears that the man accused of murdering his wife by setting their house on fire will be acquitted. Masters has only the weekend to come up with the necessary new evidence before the trial resumes the following Monday. Grade: A.
Elderly Mrs. Carlow has driven her family and neighbors nuts for years with her arrogant and manipulative behavior, often resorting to overdosing on her heart medications when she wants attention. When another overdose proves fatal, the question is whether she intended to commit suicide or was murdered; complicating matters is the fact that the local coroner, the police superintendent and other local notables are all related to her, either by blood or by marriage in Vicious Circle. Since they cannot ethically investigate the matter themselves, Masters and Green are called in to investigate. Grade: B.
The Monday Theory involves the death of a popular newspaper columnist and her boyfriend from death by arsine poisoning. The mystery is OK, but I was annoyed by Clark's using an obnoxious straw man (or woman in this case) to lambaste political liberals. Grade: C for that reason.
2 Jan 2025
Bill Green receives a letter from an old acquaintance from his days in the British Army during WWII in Dead Letter. The letter states that the writer has witnessed a murder and that a senior police official was involved. Worse yet, the letter is unsigned and does not give the writer's location. The team is forced to sift through the memories of old soldiers from Bill's unit to try to identify the writer, who is clearly in fear of his life. By the time they do identify him, he is dying, victim of an apparent hit-and-run accident, so the team is forced to try to find the site of the first murder, and identify the bent copper, on their own. Grade: A.
3 Jan 2025
George Masters has been given an assignment so secret that he can't even tell his team about it until just before they need to go into action in Jewelled Eye. The assignment is to find out who kidnapped an important scientist working on a cure for cancer, and determine what has become of him. As usual, the team has to assess the evidence and then make intuitive leaps to come up with the solution. Grade: A.
7 Jan 2025
Masters and his team have been asked to review the files of eleven murder cases of women that have occurred in the Northern District over the past year to see if they can spot any common theme among the murders in Performance. Masters does so and predicts that another woman will be murdered on or shortly after December 3rd, the date of the next full moon. He and the team are attending a performance of Handel's Messiah when a popular contralto collapses onstage at the height of her triumph. Grade: A.
In Storm Center Masters is recovering from the gunshot wound he suffered in Jewelled Eye. Although he is on sick leave, he's been asked to deliver a series of lectures at the Police College, ostensibly a paid vacation on which he can take his wife and son along. Of course, it turns out that the head of the college has an ulterior motive for requesting his presence; he wants him and his team to investigate the unexplained disappearances of two young men, five years apart, that seem to involve one of the College's foreign students. Grade: A.
10 Jan 2025
The Big Grouse has Masters and Green hunting for the traveling sales representative of a plastics company who disappeared seven months earlier. Their hunt takes them to the locality where the man worked; they find his car, but no sign of a body. Grade: B.
10 Jan 2025
The son of a professional colleague of Masters and Green has been poisoned while participating in a sailing race at sea in Plain Sailing. With no knowledge of sailing terms and techniques, and no apparent motive for either suicide or murder, Masters finds himself a bit a sea, too, in the chaos and confusion of a sailing community in the middle of an important competition. I found this one a bit confusing; in fact, I'm still not entirely sure who dunnit or why. Grade: B.
14 Jan 2025
A wealthy industrialist and friend of George and Wanda Masters, who suffers from a debilitating disease, has invited them to his birthday party in Bitter Water. They can't attend, but when a young actress who did attend dies mysteriously a few days later, Masters and Green are called to investigate. They find that the actress had fallen into the swimming pool at the party where she may have contracted the infection that killed her. Grade: B.
So that's it for the works of Douglas Clark. Although these books are technically police procedural mysteries, Masters and Green rely less on traditional police procedures and more on George Masters' flights of intuition and imagination than on routine investigation techniques.
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