Product Description

When elderly Ailsa Lockyer-Fox is found dead in her garden, dressed only in night clothes and with blood stains on the ground near her body, the finger of suspicion points at her wealthy, landowning husband, Colonel James Lockyer-Fox. A coroner's inquest gives a verdict of 'natural causes' but the gossip surrounding him refuses to go away.

Why? Because he's guilty? Or because resentful women in the isolated Dorset village where he lives rule the roost? Shenstead is a place of too few people and too many secrets. Why have James and Ailsa cut their children out of their wills? What happened in the past to create such animosity within the family? And why is James so desperate to find his illegitimate grandchild?

Friendless and alone, his reclusive behaviour begins to alarm his London-based solicitor, Mark Ankerton, whose concern deepens when he discovers that James has become the victim of a relentless campaign which accuses him of far worse than the death of his wife. Allegations which he refuses to challenge . . . Why? Because they're a motive for murder? . . .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41159 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-07
• Format: Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

About the Author

Minette Walters is England's bestselling female crime writer. She has won the CWA John Creasey Award for best first crime novel, the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best crime novel published in America and two CWA Gold Daggers for fiction. Minette writes full-time and lives in Dorset with her husband.

Customer Reviews

Disappointment!!!!!!!
I have been reading Walters books for a long time as I became infatuated with her style of writing. The Sculptress was a fabulous book which she should be proud of, however, Fox Evil has let her down. It was a very slow read and was difficult to get into. It did increase in speed once you began to know about the family,however, disappointment set in with the anti-climax ending. I am deeply disappointed at how the ending was written. Fox turned out to be a random character not previously spoken about and left me feeling quite cheated. Instead of a fabulous ending, the book was destroyed by it. It felt unfullfilled, it did not leave me begging for more just throughly disappointed. I hope that Walters next books does her more justice!!!!

A weak offering from Ms Walters
Make no bones about it, Minette Walters is a great writer. For middle-class murder and mayhem, she can't be beaten - that is, when she's on form, as in "The Ice House" and "The Dark Room" - two gripping stories with strong female characters, to whom you are sorry to say goodbye on the final page...

But then, Walters has also written much weaker novels like "The Echo" and "The Breaker", neither of which were very interesting or involving and which I had to plod through...

"Fox Evil" is somewhere in between the two - it has some great characters and the opening few chapters of the novel set things up for a cracking plot... and then it all goes awry... I was really quite disappointed with how the book panned out. As other reviewers have said, the ending is quite a disappointment. Walters has in the past given her books quite open endings, leaving us wondering what happened next... did X really kill Y? etc... but this one is simply an anti-climax (and it's a struggle to get there).

It's disappointing, from an author like Walters - who can be truly, sensationally, jaw-droppingly awesome in her writing at times - that this book doesn't go anywhere and that the twists we seem to be promised never really materialise. A few of the characters here, most notably the travellers and the snooty villagers, are pure caricature, and I know that MW can do a lot better. I liked Nancy Smith - although she is no Jinx Kingsley (from "The Dark Room").

All in all, a missed opportunity, and I've given it 2 stars because I expected a lot more from this particular author and was disappointed - it's not, all in all, a bad book, just a rather frustrating one. I hope "Disordered Minds" sees Ms Walters back on form!

An easy, but rather predictable read
This is not one of Minette Walters' best novels unfortunately. I would suggest her earlier works such as The Sculptress, The Dark Room or The Scold's Bridle. This is not a real page turner and the characters do not draw you in, but you can, if you have to, whizz through it easily.