SOME DEATHS BEFORE DYING. (1999). Peter Dickinson. ***.Rachael Marson is an old woman who is now essentially paralyzed by a crippling disease. Her mind is still active, though, and she can still talk, although with difficulty. All of her life she has involved herself in photography, and produced a record that she calls “Life.” In these albums she has photos of most of the people important to her and the places she has been. No event has gone unrecorded. While watching a television show one day – “The Antiques Road Show” – she sees a young woman bring up a dueling pistol for evaluation by one of the appraisers on the show. She recognizes the pistol as one of a matched set that she had bought for her husband years ago, and wonders how this woman had managed to get one of them. When she has the presentation box checked by her nurse, she finds that she was right – the pistol of the show was one of the set, now missing. The search for who this woman was and how the pistol got into her hands becomes the theme of the novel. It also becomes the means of uncovering past unpleasant family relationships, and…a murder. Mr. Dickinson once again has given us a curious mystery for the intelligent reader. I have to admit that the novel dragged in places, but the central theme and how it was handled were still excellent.
