Book Review: The Skeleton in the Closet

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

[4 stars]

The Skeleton in the Closet Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
M. C. Beaton
Class/Genre: Mystery Cozy Amateur Sleuth
St. Martin's, Mar 2001, $21.95, 224 pp.

In Buss, England, thirty-eight years old Fellworth Dolphin is still a virgin in more ways than just the sexual. The depressed Fellworth Dolphin knows life has passed him by. He works as a waiter at a local hotel during the day and cares for his chronic complaining mother at night. Fell has no hope for a future until the evening he came home from work and sees his widowed mother sitting in her armchair. She is dead.

To his shock, Fell inherits a fortune which enrages him even more towards his parents as they blackmailed him into giving up the university to bring in income to insure the family never starved. He begins to wonder where the loot came from and wonders if his father, a railroad signalman, was involved in an unsolved train robbery. Fell begins to investigate the train robbery accompanied by Maggie Partlett the waitress who is also equally emotionally deprived. As they work together making inquires, they begin to fall in love, but neither one was ever the recipient of unselfish love. Will they recognize their feelings before the danger they stirred with their sleuthing causes permanent harm? What will the truth do to the already fractured psychological psyches of two individuals with deep emotional scars?

THE SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET is a delightful amateur sleuth tale, but not quite at the level of M.C. Beaton's wonderful Raisin or MacBeth novels. The characters make the story line gel, but readers will feel anger and pity for the stars, who allowed emotional blackmail to cripple them. That reaction by the audience slows down a tale that fails to attain the mark of excellence expected by Ms. Beaton's fans.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner

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