July 2025 Group Read - A Cousin Removed by Malcolm Forsythe

[David]

A Cousin Removed, by Malcolm Forsythe

"MRS DOUGLAS DIED ON A PLEASANT SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN JUNE. THE WITNESSES SAID SHE SLIPPED OVERBOARD.

Chief Inspector Millson is not convinced that Daphne Douglas accidentally drowned while cruising on a yacht. He suspects the husband, but can find no motive and no evidence to arrest him.

Meanwhile, with the help of Detective Scobie, he turns his attention to a cold the disappearance of a soldier called Stanford Boley, thirty years ago. His mum has never given up hope of finding him alive.

Then, Detective Millson is confronted with another accident. With a string of cases all leading him to Mr. Douglas, this time he knows it's murder. But can he find the link that proves it?"

Discussion Leader: Bill Kupersmith
Link to Book on Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3ImoKBg

[Bill]

Really enjoying this one so far. Setting reminds me of youthful summers long ago sailing with the West Mersey Yacht Club.

[Bill]

I’d previously read Without a Trace, the first book in this series, unaware. Which is a clue that the detective team of Milson and Scobie are pretty much your standard garden variety of older curmudgeonly DCI and keen younger DCS. It was the location that drew me to both, and in this one the Walton & Frinton Yacht Club is a principal setting, reminding me happily of my happy East Anglian Offshore Racing Association days of so long ago. Here one of the villains is revealed right off the bat (if I may mix my sports), the owner of a motor boozer who drowns his wife off Stone Point. At which point the experienced reader of crime fiction wonders, are we in Highsmith country? That is, will he get away with it, and should we approve? Our Colchester officers find some slightly dodgy details in the apparent marine accident, but another plot line intervenes involving a very cold case of a retired army sergeant who disappeared decades ago. Of course the senior detective thinks it irrelevant, but the girlfriend of the DSC is acquainted with the sergeant’s mum, so we readers know these two stories will coincide somehow.

The basic rule for us readers is that villains are permitted ‘to get away with it’ only if we feel the victims deserve killing. (Remember, we’re talking about characters in a story book, not real human beings.) In this case, I don’t think we feel that the drowned wife quite deserved her demise, but as a silly member of the upper classes approaching her sell-by date will not be missed. Everybody else who winds up dead deserves it. The fate of the character who gives the book its title will meet with approval from readers like me,

[Beth]

I am behind. Just starting this one.

[Beth]

That was an easy read. I enjoyed the story but I prefer a book that provides more in the way of descriptions of people and surroundings. I found the jumping back and forth between eras and locations jarring