The Final Round

his is the first in a promised trilogy featuring DI Jim Garibaldi, a self-educated but very well-read detective who refuses to drive a car. He is separated from his wife who has found a better earner, but their teenage son gives them a reason to stay in touch and argue. Garibaldi has recently found a girlfriend who shares his love of country music.

When a man’s body is found in a park beside the Thames, repeatedly stabbed, Garibaldi is called in. The post-mortem finds that the man has also been poisoned. He is identified as Nick, one of a group in their late 40s who used to be fellow students at Balfour College Oxford. The group had recently gathered at the annual celebrity pub quiz organised by Melissa, now a BBC newsreader.

The quiz ended with a surprise finale – some unknown person broadcast a series of assertions about each of the group and invited guesses as to which was correct. Greg, a novelist, was accused of plagiarism, headmistress Fay of taking bribes not to expel a misbehaving student, Chris of being blackmailed over a sex tape, Julia of being a serial shoplifter, Melissa of having a secret lovechild and Nick of murder.

Nick is renowned for being somewhat wild, but in the absence of any other evidence as to why someone should want to kill him, attention is primarily directed at the quiz claims. The other members of the group are repeatedly interviewed and give little away, although there are hints that they all have matters that they are anxious to conceal, suggesting that while they all deny the possibility of the murderer being one of the group, it seems entirely possible.

This is a murder mystery very much of the traditional kind, albeit with recognisable modern-day competitive Oxbridge characters, privileged and snobby, of the type that Garibaldi (and others) find altogether too familiar. Their mental anguish gives rise to a certain amount of schadenfreude but isn’t likely to elicit a great deal of sympathy. Garibaldi seems to have much the same sentiments and takes joy in producing literary references to dumbfound the supposedly better-educated suspects.

Since Garibaldi’s efforts do not produce any early clues (insofar as I could tell) the discovery of guilt, while perfectly satisfactory, could equally well be transferred from the perpetrator to several of the others, so detective insights are limited to the final pages. The author has a light-hearted touch, however, and Garibaldi is a pleasant enough character to make The Final Round an amusing read.