Fatal Flaw by Frank Smith
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"'I know it can't change what happened, but I've changed. They helped me in there -- they really did. There was this psychiatrist who used to come once a week...'"

A remarkably unremarkable novel!

Frank Smith's Fatal Flaw (1996) begins with a man pleading for forgiveness for something terrible that he had done to a woman. Then we read about a burglary, where, curiously, nothing seems to be missing. A man is assaulted after leaving a pub. The three seemingly unrelated events are probably designed to pique the reader's curiosity.

The actual setup of the plot appears to have no connection with these events. On Christmas Day, Monica, a 17-year-old student of a Thornton Hill School for Girls is found dead of apparent suicide. While all other girls have gone home for the Christmas break, the victim had to stay on school grounds because her mother was abroad on government business.

Detective Chief Inspector Neil Paget, helped by Detective Sergeant Tregalles, leads the investigation. (I have now discovered that this is the first novel in the DCI Paget series.) Not much is learned during the first days other than that Monica was unhappy and generally unpopular girl. While at the outset it seems that her death had to have something in common with her visit to the nearby stables, the lead does not bring any progress, and suicide seems to be the obvious conclusion.

On a seemingly lighter note one of the threads involves Paget's romantic interest in Andrea, a local doctor. Yet the lightness does not last as the author hints at some dark secrets in Andrea's past.

This procedural/psychological crime novel is as British as they come! Shropshire county is the location, social class plays a significant role in everything that happens, and there is even a hunt event organized at the stables - I wish it were described in greater detail. DCI Paget is very British in his reserve and general demeanor. Yet for me everything is a bit too cliché: the plot, the situations, and characterizations. The detectives, the school personnel - particularly the headmistress and the housemistress - and the stables crowd feel like characters in a crime novel rather than real people.

Alas, the writing is average too, pedestrian and uninspired. I have found only one short passage in the entire novel that made me go "Wow! Nice!":

"For a moment she had the strangest feeling that the walls of the room had vanished; that there was nothing; she was alone in the universe.
The feeling passed, and she just felt empty."

Yes, I know the feeling. Marginal recommendation.

Two-and-a-half stars.



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