Review: AN ARTISTIC WAY TO GO, Roderic Jeffries

• first published 1996
• Book 20 in the Inspector Alvarez series
• this edition in large print published by Chivers Press 1998
• 288 pages
• ISBN 0-7540-3509-3

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

Art dealer Oliver Cooper lives an idyllic life on Mallorca until White, a Mafia hitman, turns up demanding that he pay back a large sum of money he swindled from White's currently imprisoned boss.
When Cooper disappears and his car is found abandoned, Inspector Alvarez is called in to investigate. 

My Take

In many ways this reminded me of Martin Walker's Bruno Chief of Police series set in France. Except that the Inspector Alvarez series is set in Mallorca. But the premise is similar: police detective embedded in his local community.

Every now and then in AN ARTISTIC WAY TO GO the reader is given tantalising glimpses of Alvarez' backstory, enough to encourage further dabbling in the series. The details about life in Mallorca have an authentic feel, a place that struggles to cope with the impact of tourism and the influx of new residents who threaten the old agricultural way of life.

There are plenty of suspects in the disappearance of British art dealer Oliver Cooper, even suicide and Alvarez narrows the list down methodically although in the long run he gets to the answer by intuition.

A fairly light, but enjoyable read.

My rating: 4.3

About the author (Fantastic Fiction)

RODERIC JEFFRIES was born in London in 1926 and was educated at Southampton's School of Navigation. In 1943 he went to sea with the New Zealand Shipping Company and returned to England in 1949 where he was subsequently called to the Bar. He practiced law for a brief period before starting to write full time. His books have been published in many different countries and have been adapted for film, television, and radio. He and his wife live in Mallorca, and have two children.
Roderic Jeffries is prolific author, having now published 36 titles in the Inspector Alvarez series and another 27 standalone titles. He writes also as Peter Alding, Jeffrey Ashford, Roderic Graeme, Graham Hastings.