Midway between old-world detective story and a police procedural, That Way Murder Lies is about average. The police in this book is Alan Markby, a dour man who hates people at random without any reason. His fiancee, Meredith Mitchell works in a consulate. Her friend from the consulate is Toby Smythe, who turns up with a mystery to solve, and Meredith convinces Alan to look into it. I really liked the scope of the mystery. Toby's cousin's wife, Alison, was acquitted for a murder when she was in her early twenties. She begins to receive anonymous hate notes. When another murder takes place in exactly the same way, the stage is set. The idea was intriguing and I enjoyed the long moments when I wondered about the years-old mystery and whether Alison was guilty or not.However, I did not really like Markby and his aversion to Toby was completely weird. He just sounded like a jerk every time he began to degrade Toby for whatever he did. I also found it completely useless for Meredith to be kidnapped by the murderer, just so that Alan could rescue her. In this story, it just came out of the blue and made no sense at all. Please let's change the trope already. Some of the characters were interesting, though I wish more time was given to the real murderer. Concentrating on Meredith, Alan and Toby was a huge mistake as they were the most colourless characters around. A new female inspector introduced out of nowhere and fulfilling no discernible purpose also did not add to the story.Suspense was good and maintained till the end. In short, this is just an average mystery and nothing much to recommend it, but I won't actively suggest against reading it.
