SPOILER!!!
Well I finished the book last night and was extremely disappointed with its conclusion.
In a nutshell what it says is that Wallace blackmailed Marsden and Parry to become involved in his plan to murder Julia. Parry made the call and Marsden killed Julia. The blackmail was because both Marsden and Parry had paid Julia for sex. This is the most ridiculous theory ever!
As for implicating Marsden with a link to him being a prudential agent three years previously and visited a customer with the name of Qualtrough, again a very weak link……with the added information that he wasn’t fully investigated because his uncle was a bigwig in the Police.
Clearly there has been lots of research – but some of the information contained within the book was totally irrelevant. This included using people’s full names and letting the reader know where/when they were born; who their parents were; what they did for a living. I did find all the names being used quite irritating!
Where the book also failed for me was its failure to have an essence of the period and the personalities of those involved, which to be fair would be difficult, given that all the main players are dead and there’s no one who can give a first hand account of those involved.
The chapter on “Family Wipe Out” was boring. I couldn’t see this related to the Wallace case as a theory for the motive. From what we’ve all read Mr Wallace was of a stoic character, but at that time people were anyway.
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This book hasn’t answered any questions for me. I think that Julia was let down right at the start of the investigation by the Police, including the police surgeon because things appear not to have been done properly. More medical investigation could have been done, for instance when Mrs Johnson touched Julia’s arm it was still warm. Given it was a cold night, how long does a dead body take to cool – not something I’d like to investigate.
There were too many “Maybe….” , “Perhaps…..”, “Possible….” in the book.
There is much more to say about the book – but I wouldn’t want to hurt JG’s feelings because he clearly has worked extremely hard in its production and I for one couldn’t have done it – so thank you John for your attempt at solving this fascinating case, I did enjoy reading most of your book.
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