sections:
It had always been a house of secrets, a house of shadows; spiders spinning in the cracks, woodlice crawling through the fallen plaster. The kids called it The Red House; exactly why none of them could tell. But then, none of them was asked until that summer, the summer they found her there, strangled.
Two men had the job of tracing seventeen-year-old Jenny Hyde's killer. One was Chief Inspector Henry Hall, an elitist copper of the new school who was driving in one direction only — to the top. It was his job, his territory. The other was Peter Maxwell - 'Mad Max' - bow-tied, shapeless tweed hat atop his barbed-wire hair, a widowed teacher under suspension and suspicion.
Maxwell didn't have to become involved at all. But he was involved; so involved that he didn't know how to get out. Jenny had been one of his sixth-form pupils.
Maxwell's House is a brilliantly realised departure for the creator of the Inspector Sholto Lestrade crime novels. 'Mad Max', film buff, eccentric and golden-hearted cynic, is a wondrous character of whom, it is hoped, much more will be seen.
book reviews
- Marcel Berlins The Times
Good plot and a successful sortie for Trow into the 1990s.’ - John Coleman, Sunday Times
‘Cleverly conceived and amusingly executed, this is sterling new Trow.’ - The Observer
‘It’s a good, hard to solve mystery.' - Bolton Evening News
‘Clever and convincing with an excellent finale.'
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