Lovelace and Button (International Investigators) Inc: A Chief Inspector Bliss Mystery

Steven Greenhalgh is the research librarian in the Department of Public
Health Sciences at the University of Alberta.

Minnie Dennon, a British senior, dies in the path of an oncoming train.
Although she is initially viewed as having been the victim of a random
act of crime, further investigation suggests Minnie’s death to have
been a suicide. However, a rash of additional suicides by the elderly
across Britain leads Inspector Bliss to discover that all the seniors
involved had previously wired large sums of money to a Western Union
office located in Vancouver, B.C. Leaving the bizarre series of deaths
behind him, Inspector Bliss travels to Seattle, Washington, to attend an
international conference on law enforcement. On the way, he entrusts the
care of 90-year-old Daphne Lovelace, one of Minnie’s friends, to
homemaker Trina Button, an acquaintance in Vancouver. A sudden road trip
across North America to raise funds for kidney research leads Trina and
Daphne to a secluded government base near Seattle, where they soon find
themselves imprisoned and awaiting rescue by Bliss.

James Hawkins’s time spent as a U.K. police commander and, later, as
a Canadian private investigator are apparent in his knowledge of police
procedures. The novel has a tone of anti-Americanism, as Inspector Bliss
must outwit and outmanoeuvre a host of CIA agents. The occasionally
volatile relationship between Inspector Bliss and his superior, Chief
Superintendent Edwards, provides the reader with some comic relief. The
quirky team of Trina and Daphne also offers some amusement, although
some of the actions they undertake to escape imprisonment and to
infiltrate a secret government base lack plausibility. Nevertheless,
Lovelace and Button is a quick, entertaining read.