Bad Chemistry: A Gillian Adams Mystery

By Nora Kelly

Book Overview

Canadian historian Gillian Adams finds herself back in Cambridge. She's set to enjoy that lovely city in high summer--and her romance with Scotland Yard Detective Chief Inspector Edward Gisborne, even though he's tying up a child-killing case in Lambeth. Then the death of a research fellow in the Department of Chemistry shocks both the university and the town.
Gillian is linked to the victim through old friends and to the Cambridge police through Edward. Ideally placed to investigate Wendy Fowler's murder, she turns up evidence of venomous professional rivalries and at least one clandestine liaison. Not to mention that Wendy, a volunteer at the Pregnancy Information Service, is herself pregnant.
Then a second body turns up. There is no compelling evidence to link it to Wendy, nor to the motives ascribed to the suspects in her death. As the police sift the facts, Gillian looks at the crimes from a feminist perspective, seeing that that science, contemporary mores, and more conservative traditions have produced a volatile--indeed, fatal--mixture....
Gillian Adams began her sleuthing career with In the Shadow of King's and My Sister's Keeper. Her fourth case, Old Wounds, won Canada's 1999 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel. Ms. Kelly is at work on a 5th novel.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1890208345
• ISBN13: 9781890208349
• Release Date: November 2011
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

A great and fun mystery!

Nora Kelly is a native Easterner who is now living in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she teaches part time. She has been involved in writing her Gillian Adams mysteries for several years, and has won the 1999 Arthus Ellis Best Novel Award awarded by the Canadian Crime Writers Association.Using a University as a backdrop, where old buildings reek of sinister motives; strange chemicals are used in obscure experiments; and cutthroat individualists fight over diminishing federal and private grant funds is a recipe for intrigue and mayhem. Gillian Adams is a department head of the History Department at the University of the Pacific Northwest. Her boyfriend, Edward Gisborne, is a Deputy Chief Inspector for Scotland Yard. Both have demanding jobs and have let their relationship wind around their crushing schedules. Gillian is in Cambridge, England on Sabbatical, thinking about her next career move, when the murder of Wendy Fowler, a research fellow strikes uncomfortably close. Gillian's friends are involved in a nonprofit organization called the Pregnancy Information Service where Wendy volunteered. It is up to Gillian and Edward to sort out the murderer's motives, and to tie the murderer in with the PIS office: " So you think he might have burgled the PIS office?' Irene said. To steal the cards? That's silly. What good would it do?' Maybe he wanted to see what we said about other doctors. Maybe he thought he could sue if he had the evidence.' No. But he might have taken the book. Who else would? He probably thought the information he wanted was in it. Or something else he could use against us. And then he took the money so we'd think it was an ordinary burglary."Not only does Kelly create a labyrinth of clues; her characterizations have the reader seriously considering almost every character she introduces as a suspect. Her particular form of feminism is well articulated through the characters, and their relationships strike a chord in the reader. Wendy Fowler is pregnant, and when a second body turns up that is connected to the PIS, Gillian and Edward take the reader through a well constructed plot that keeps the pages turning.Bad Chemistry is great fun and is a cozy that will be embraced by the mystery reading world.Shelley Glodowski, Reviewer