In the last analysis by Amanda Cross

I liked this a lot. Only 217 pages, which for me is rather a perfect amount: no long descriptions of sceneries, architecture, clothes, or any other kind of useless (for me, that it) descriptions.
Only the story, and a nice one, the words flying by as I read on. The ending is rather abrupt, so if someone likes to guess the solution before it is revealed it might be somewhat irritating because I think it’s almost impossible to guess it right. 
Now all the details: Kate Fansler is an English teacher. A student, Janet Harrison, asks her to recommend a good psychoanalyst and Kate gives her the name of her good friend Emanuel Bauer. 

When Janet is stabbed to death on his couch, in his house, with his knife, Emanuel is the first suspect, his wife Nicola the second. Kate throws herself into the investigation, 100% sure of their innocence, with the help of her good friend a.d.a. Reed, and young Jerry, engaged to her niece Sarah. There seems to be little hope of solving the mystery, but at the end she conjures up a nice, neat theory that only lacks evidence. She is sure that Janet and Dr Michael Barrister were in love, and yet he kept secret that he knew her and she kept an old picture of him hidden in her documents. Kate puts together a lot of things that are not exactly “facts” but are important nonetheless: the literary preferences of the doctor when he was young, Janet’s dreams that indicate she hated lawyers (barrister!), things that the doctor suddenly forgot after returning from Canada... and her big theory is that the doc met and fell in love with Janet in Canada, but then he met a man who looked a lot like him. The man killed him, or somehow he died, and the man took his identity. Many things kept Janet away for years, and then she went looking for him and realized he wasn’t the man she loved and tried to prove it, and he killed her. A good man who knew him when they were students and also his sensitive wife manage to find a way to prove it. The real Mike Barrister had had an operation and should still have the scar on his back. Reed takes it upon himself to go look and prove that she was right. The book ends with a scene happening six weeks later: Kate going on holiday, sailing for Europe; she finds Reed is there too, on “vacation and leave”, for protection: “I wanted to protect you, so to speak, in the quarantine period, to be sure the fever was gone” - “what fever?” - “detective fever. I’ve known a few people with cases like yours. They invariably sail for Europe and trip over a body on their way to the shower” . :lol: