When Rosemary Sheffield, the vicar's wife, loses her religious faith, it is far from a personal matter. When a body is found after a church fete it is up to Detective Constable Charlie Pearce and his boss Mike Oddie to discover whether Rosemary's spiritual crisis has led to murder.
Sergeant Yoti thinks the case of the four missing babies, which is completely baffiing him, will be the one case that Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte will not be able to solve. Bony arrives in Mitford just as the police are discovering that Mrs. Rockcliff has been murdered and her baby has been taken from its crib. Bony is much helped in this case by his 'cousin,' First Constable Alice McGorr, whose penetrating comments on the nature of the mothers of the lost babies are most revealing. A delightful story.
Bony, passing as a squatter from western Queensland, has been seconded to the Army on a secret assignment. He is a guest at Wideview Chalet when Mr. Brumann is found dead in a ditch and his luggage is missing. Constable Rice is telephoned and arrives simultaneously with a visitor for Mr. Brumann. Constable Rice recognizes the visitor and is shot dead by him. Bony is ably assisted by Bisker, the handyman. Bony calls this 'a lovely case-a glorious mixup of a case.
Is the Miranda warning, which lets an accused know of the right to remain silent, more about procedural fairness or about the conventions of speech acts and silences? Do U.S. laws about Native Americans violate the preferred or traditional "silence" of the peoples whose religions and languages they aim to "protect" and "preserve"? In Just Silences, Marianne Constable draws on such examples to explore what is at stake in modern law: a potentially new silence as to justice.
