Wed 31 Dec 2014
An Archived Review: DOROTHY SIMPSON – The Night She Died.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[9] Comments
DOROTHY SIMPSON – The Night She Died. Scribner’s, hardcover, 1981. Bantam, paperback, 1985. Poisoned Pen Press, trade paperback, 1998, First published in the UK by Michael Joseph, hardcover, 1981.
In the world of crime fiction, there seems to be an unwritten law that a new private eye has to have a gimmick, a little quirk of behavior, perhaps, that will help him (or her) stand out from all the others. There is a similar theory for policemen, and it holds that because of the nature of their job, they need humanizing: a loving family, perhaps. Teething babies. Bad backs.
Inspector Thanet is lucky. He has all three.
His current case involves a murdered woman. Who killed her? Her husband, with whom she was seeing a marriage counselor? Her thwarted, amorous boss? The determined ex-suitor?
Thanet’s investigation also takes him back into the past, over his sergeant’s objections, to dig up an unsolved murder the victim may have witnessed as a child. The problem is that looking into this old case is as dry and uninteresting as poking around in a pile of dusty bones, and it’d be awfully easy to give the story up as routine right here.
And this you shouldn’t do, as Simpson has a terrific surprise in store for the persevering reader who sticks it out to the end. I suspect there’ll be a good many people who’ll never reach it. Exquisitely plotted, and ploddingly told — a sad combination.
The Inspector Thanet series —
1. The Night She Died (1981)
2. Six Feet Under (1982)
3. Puppet for a Corpse (1983)
4. Close Her Eyes (1984)
5. Last Seen Alive (1985)
6. Dead On Arrival (1986)

7. Element of Doubt (1987)
8. Suspicious Death (1988)
9. Dead By Morning (1989)
10. Doomed to Die (1991)

11. Wake the Dead (1992)
12. No Laughing Matter (1993)
13. A Day for Dying (1995)

14. Once Too Often (1998)
15. Dead and Gone (1999)
December 31st, 2014 at 3:31 pm
As I recall, and I could easily be wrong about this, I read one other Thanet novel back around this same time, and I found it equally non-memorable.
Tastes change, however, and I’m inclined to give the series another try. I did not know until I added the bibliography to this review how many of Thanet’s adventures there are. All of them were published in this country by Scribners. I wonder how many of them came out in the US in paperback.
December 31st, 2014 at 4:35 pm
They released quite a few in paperback here, though I only read one Thanet and decided she wasn’t my cuppa. For a while they were coming out on a regular schedule in paper.
December 31st, 2014 at 7:13 pm
I notice how many of these reviews of yours are reprinted from The Mystery Fancier. You must have produced quite a lot of them. I had a set of this once, but gave it to the University of Minnesota Library.
December 31st, 2014 at 9:26 pm
Yes, I was the primary reviewer for TMF for several years, maybe 5 or 6, possibly more. It was a while ago now, though. Many of the books I barely remember reading, but for some reason, this one I do.
December 31st, 2014 at 10:17 pm
I like Dorothy Simpson’s novels, actually, though I don’t love them. I don’t find her dry or uninteresting – I generally find the books well-paced and I usually breeze through them pretty quickly, wanting to know what happens next. But I do find that, for me, they are missing some je-ne-sais-quoi factor that would make them more engaging and memorable.
December 31st, 2014 at 11:43 pm
Dorothy Simpson’s books were published in paperback by Bantam through #11 WAKE THE DEAD, the next two by Warner, with the last two appearing in hardcover only.
I have most of the Bantam ones, and next time I come across one of them, maybe I’ll see if I agree with myself or not from 33 years ago.
January 1st, 2015 at 8:34 am
Everything you say is true, and yet I found myself reading a dozen of them in a single year (1995) and the rest in the years that followed. I’m not sure why but I did want to know what happens next. My tastes may have changed since then as I read fewer mysteries these days, certainly of the British police type.
January 1st, 2015 at 2:29 pm
I went through a phase about ten years ago where I read many of the Thanet books. I enjoyed them, but they are admittedly rather dry. I think part of what makes them that way is that each book contains so much exposition — each suspect provides their version of events and then Thanet has to parse the meaning of all discrepancies. There’s a lot of recapping of what has come before too. Like Jeff, I don’t know if I’d be interested in revisiting these books now.
January 2nd, 2015 at 10:55 pm
Like David, the Thanet books don’t seem to be my cup of tea. I’ve seen the Bantam reprints from time to time, but I’ve passed them by.