Last Nocturne

Beautifully written and highly evocative of the bustling streets of London and Vienna in the early twentieth century, Marjorie Eccles's Last Nocturne is an intriguingly complex mystery of passion and the devastating repercussions of a single action. What could make a successful, happily married man take a gun and shoot himself? What made a young artist on the brink of fame throw himself to his death? These are the questions facing Chief Inspector Lamb and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Cogan. Neither victim left a note behind to explain what drove him to take his own life, and it appears that nothing untoward had occurred in the weeks preceding their deaths. Having briefly met both victims, Lamb struggles to connect the impression he gained of the men with their final actions, and his close attention pays off when a postmortem reveals some surprising results. With one case now looking like a suspicious death, Lamb looks for links between the two men. All paths seem to lead to the enigmatic figure of Mrs. Isobel Amberley and a mysterious event that took place one winter's night in Vienna.