Catherine Aird's Inspector Sloan Mysteries: Crime Patterns
Continuing yesterday's train of thought - a bit more analysis of cases where the killer had gotten away with a crime previously, and only got caught for the most recent crime / murder.
- HENRIETTA WHO?
The crooked solicitor killed the title character's parents (dressed up to look like a murder / suicide); it passed a police investigation, since it happened during World War II and during the same week as a bad bombing, so that the police were very overworked. The crooked solicitor got away with a 3rd murder - that of his secretary, as a hit-and-run.
It was only his fourth murder, that of the title character's foster mother, that got him caught, and then only because the pathologist noticed some oddities during the autopsy, starting with the fact that the victim had been hit twice by the same car, once before and once after her death.
Note: The author's father was a doctor. I assume this is a reason why the medical evidence is so often a factor in Aird's murder mysteries. - THE COMPLETE STEEL
The thief had stolen a lot of valuable paintings from a previous employer, replacing them with forgeries, and apparently had gotten away with it. (The cops knew the theft had happened, but apparently hadn't identified the thief.) He got caught because he tried the same trick at his current job with the most valuable painting in the place, and had the bad luck to have the substitution spotted very quickly. (He then very foolishly killed the person who spotted the substitution - at least, I think it was foolish.) - A LATE PHOENIX
The victim's boyfriend killed her during World War II; nobody knew she was dead because she had not been living in the area, and her only living relative (that we know about) hadn't been too keen on her. The killer got away with this until the 1970s, when the old bomb site where she'd been buried was finally being redeveloped.
At that, he *might* have gotten away with it still if he'd sat tight and hadn't done *anything*. Instead, he manipulated the construction site to try to keep her body from being found, which immediately tipped the police off during the investigation to the fact that somebody knew the victim was buried there. - SLIGHT MOURNING
The killer was the victim's doctor. He'd have gotten away with it (poisoning) if the victim hadn't driven someone home on the night of the poisoning - if things had gone as planned, he'd have died in his sleep, and the killer would have signed the death certificate. - PARTING BREATH
The killer was a spy, waiting to steal a scientist's research. If he'd minded his business and hadn't committed a murder, he'd probably have succeeded at his main job. The scientist said later that he'd thought he was being watched, but that doesn't seem to have amounted to much. - PASSING STRANGE
The killer - the steward in charge of an elderly, bedridden widow's estate - had been up to financial games with her tenants' rent for years, and was clever enough to do it in a way that meant the books balanced quite legitimately. (He was charging one tenant a much higher rate per acre than the others, but that was because the others were *under* charged and paying him the difference.) He got away with it until the widow died, and even then the executor doesn't really seem to have suspected anything (if he had, I don't see why he couldn't have looked over the books more closely.) When the estate looked like passing into the control of trustees who'd presumably pay close attention to the books, the killer started making moves that ended in a murder. - LAST RESPECTS
The killer had gotten away with his wife's murder, and a minor robbery of her estate. The only person who was suspicious was his wife's nephew-in-law-to-be, who recognized her symptoms as those of poisoning. He almost got away with the nephew's murder as well, by making it look as though he'd run out on his girlfriend. He wasn't as smart as the killer in A LATE PHOENIX, though - he forged a farewell note instead of just leaving events to speak for themselves. - HARM'S WAY
Wife almost got away with her husband's murder - she and her lover hid the body, and she put it about that her husband had run away with another woman. Nobody bothered to check up on her story. - A DEAD LIBERTY
Architectural firm's second-in-command gets away with a major fraud on a big contract while his boss is away on the firm's next project. Also gets away with one murder of a junior employee who caught a discrepancy at an awkward moment. Almost gets away with 2nd murder (junior employee #2 replaced junior employee #1, noticed the same discrepancy).