Aunt Jenny is dead. The only clue Marlo Shaw has is an ad, cut out from a newspaper, and her Aunt's gnomic message in her will, hoping that Marlo will put the bequeathed contents of her study to good use. Is Jenny's death linked to sinister property developer Mr Bolt, who wants to buy her house, or is the cause much closer to home?
There are interesting characters in An Uncertain Death, not least Marlo Shaw. But it is difficult to empathise with Marlo. When she discovers the body of her aunt, she takes photographs - and, even more bizarrely, she has the pictures developed at the Aussie equivalent of Supasnaps! Happy to accept the devotion of a man who has been more than patient with her dithering about committing to a relationship, she has sex with him when she feels the need for physical closeness, but subsequently ignores his calls.
Marlo's dismay at her cousin Lucy's apparent unconcern at the death of her aunt seems hypocritical: while Lucy's detachment is explained by a brain injury in childhood which has left her changed, unable to relate to people in the normal way; the reasons for Marlo's own lack of emotional affect are less clear.
She reflects that dogs are more constant than people, and yet her friends are unbelievably forgiving and patient: they cover for her absences at work, tolerate her unwillingness to commit, even risk bodily injury for her.
While Marlo and Lucy are convincing, if cold, too many of the suspects are little more than names; they flit in and out of the narrative, making scant impact, and are not established enough to be discernible as credible individuals, so the denouement is a scramble to sort out who the culprit is in relation to Marlo, rather than a satisfying surprise.
