Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Midsummer Malice by M. D. Lake

Midsummer Malice by Allen Simpson writing as M.D. Lake (Avon, 1997) is the ninth mystery featuring Peggy O’Neill, a law enforcement officer at an unnamed Minnesota university on the Mississippi River. Simpson was a professor of Scandinavian literature at the University of Minnesota and then retired to write full time. Between 1989 and 1999 he released 10 O’Neill mysteries, winning the American Mystery Award for best original paperback in 1992 for the fourth in the series, Poisoned Ivy.

On her usual night patrol of the campus Peggy runs into Steadman George, a local shady character known for his piano-playing, tall tales, and drinking. He offers her a story about an off-the-books baby adoption he brokered 20 years ago and asks her what he should do if the biological mother returns and wants to meet her now grown daughter but doesn’t know where she is. He insists that the situation is hypothetical but gives enough corroborative detail to make Peggy think otherwise and to suggest he intends to somehow profit from it.

When Steadman’s alcohol-filled body is pulled from the Mississippi a couple of nights later, only Peggy thinks the death is not as accidental as it seems. She wanted to believe that Steadman was truly on the wagon this time, as he had claimed. In addition, she saw the silhouette of a second person in Steadman’s quarters on the old riverboat he lived on the night he died, but none of his usual cronies admitted seeing him then. Fearing the birth mother who has come back to check on her daughter is also in danger, Peggy begins a frantic search for her and for proof that Steadman’s drowning was deliberate.

As much of a narrative analysis of the age-old issues surrounding adoption as a police procedural, the story vividly portrays the perspectives of the birth mother, adoptive mother, and the adopted daughter in addition to Peggy’s investigative process. The question of to tell or not to tell about the adoption is examined from all sides. Of course this book pre-dates the recent explosion of DNA testing services, which has only created more questions and more surprises for the people in the adoption triangle.

A solid entry in a series that has been too soon forgotten.

·         Mass Market Paperback: 265 pages

·         Publisher: Avon (December 1, 1997)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 0380787598

·         ISBN-13: 978-0380787593

Aubrey Hamilton ©2018

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal IT projects by day and reads mysteries at night.