None of the Loudron family are particularly balanced, but which of them or their hangers-on was loony enough to persecute and eventually kill their father Piers? Nigel Strangeways and Clare Massinger become involved in murder when their elderly neighbour disappears and is found floating in the Thames with his wrists slashed. There is a good deal of family history and a good deal too much psychology, but the book benefits from a strong sense of place: Blake has chosen to write about Greenwich, where he lived, and provides plenty of atmospheric detail about tides, ships, currents, local geography and London pea-souper fogs -- though these must have been on the way out, surely, by 1961?
One of the better Blakes, especially for readers who can suspend their disbelief in Freudianism.
Jon.
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