Lamb to the Slaughter (1995) by Jennifer Rowe

Jennifer Rowe is an Australian author and editor primarily known for her children's fantasy novels, published as by "Emily Rodda," which were adapted in Japan as a manga serial and 65-part anime TV series alongside a card game and a Nintendo DS video game – all appearing under the series banner title, Deltora Quest. Rowe also had a brief dalliance with the detective genre during the late 1980s and early '90s. 

Between 1987 and 1995, Rowe wrote five novels and a short story collection about an ABC-TV researcher and amateur detective, Verity "Birdie" Birdwood. The series is largely forgotten today, but, whenever the series is mentioned, it tends to come with a truckload of praise. And not without reason! If today's review is any indication of her other work, Rowe is an exception to the rule when it comes to the predicate "a modern Agatha Christie."  

Lamb to the Slaughter (1995) is the fifth, and final, entry in the Verity Birdwood series with a plot best described as a modern reinterpretation of the contemplative, murder-in-the-past style detective novels – like Christie's Five Little Pigs (1942) and Sparkling Cyanide (1945). I was particular reminded of Five Little Pigs in which the truth is locked away somewhere in the past with all the clues and hints dropped in conversations or hidden in descriptions and the psychological makeup of the characters. The result is startlingly good! A devilishly clever, classically-styled detective story camouflaged as a modern, character-driven crime novel.  

Five years ago, Rosalie Lamb found the body of her pregnant sister-in-law, Daphne, lying on the kitchen floor of her shack with her head "smashed to pulp." She stumbled to the pub to get help and found her brother, Trevor, slumped over the wheel of his wrecked car "covered in blood." Trevor Lamb was arrested, tried and convicted to life in prison. Which is where the case would have rested had it not been for a crusader of justice.  

Jude Gregorian didn't like Trevor Lamb "any more than the cops, or the judge and jury had done," but "he didn't think dislike was a good enough reason to gaol a man for life." Gregorian threw himself at the case and wrote a bestselling book, Lamb to the Slaughter, which suppressed no inconvenient facts or impression. It showed why the jury had convicted Trevor and then "carefully explained why it had been wrong." A long, drawn-out legal and PR battle ended with Trevor being pardoned and Gregorian accompanying him back to Hope's End to the bosom of his family. Verity Birdwood is there right with him as an ABC-TV researcher to help setup a documentary and interview. But his return is not a happy homecoming for everyone. 

Daphne's parents and brother still live in Hope's End and her father is enraged that the man who killed his daughter only did "five bloody years in gaol," but Trevor succeeds in riling up the entire town – including his own "wonderful family." At the pub, Trevor attacks everyone who screamed for his blood or talked to the police, while his relatives blew their mouths to the press and made everything ten times worse. But now he's back. And he knows who really killed Daphne. Trevor lets everyone know he's going to reveal the truth to the world, but leaves them hanging for the night. So you can probably make an educated guess what happens next.  

This build towards that second, inevitable murder gobbles up one-third of the story and hardly gives unsuspecting readers the impression they're reading a whodunit in the tradition of Queen of Crime. Nor could you mistake the book for a squeaky clean, modern cozy as nothing could be further removed from the world of nosy cats, knitting patterns and soft pastel covers than Hope's End. 

Kate, of Cross Examining Crime, whose reviews of the series served as a reminder to track down one of Rowe's mysteries mentioned in her 2018 review she nearly stranded in the third chapter. She found the social milieu of the town and its populace, especially the Lambs, a little too unpleasant as "they just exude sweat, alcohol and crassness." Kate has a point. Hope's End is a rural, lower-class town of people close to the bottom rang of society and the place is pretty much life's end station. The picture Rowe gives of Hope's End is not a happy one and the story is definitely a little overwritten or drawn out in parts (such as the beginning), but something I can easily forgive when it serves a purpose or has a payoff. Lamb to the Slaughter has both with the story picking up when Trevor is murdered under identical circumstances.  

Since this second murder is guaranteed to get national exposure, Birdie has to discreetly play detective as she talks to everyone involved trying to piece together a fragmented past to see where it fits the present. There's one constant resurfacing in every conversation she has, "everyone loved Daphne," but, if Trevor didn't kill her, who did? There's also an interesting plot-thread concerning the missing murder weapon, which the police were unable to find and forensic evidence reveals "whatever was used to kill Trevor Lamb was used to kill his wife as well" and must have been hidden somewhere in Hope's End all along – right under everyone's nose. Rowe artfully dovetails every strand of the plot with characters backstories, histories and the various scenes to come to a conclusion that's both surprising and as inevitable as Trevor Lamb's murder.  

Where Lamb to the Slaughter cemented its status as classic is the finely-tuned balance between fair play clueing and devious misdirection. You see, I very briefly considered the murderer, but was unable to see how this person fitted that role and abandoned it as a possibility. Only to be shown this person was the murderer with all the clues being right in front of me! This is antidote I sorely needed after my previous disaster.  

Rowe's Lamb to the Slaughter is bright light in the dimmed nineties and rank it alongside Roger Ormerod and Mary Monica Pulver's Original Sin (1991) as the best the pure detective story had to offer at the time. Highly recommended!