The Sleeping and the Dead 4 - The End (Pages 294 - end)

 RATING: GOOD

SPOILERS!!!!

Stout is convinced that Reeves is the murderer, and then a neighbour reports that he arrived home the night before. Stout and Peter go there and find him hanging from the ceiling. Peter realises that someone tried to make it look like suicide, but it is murder.

Then Rosie is kidnapped, and her kidnapper asks Hannah for 20,000 pounds as ransom. Hannah recognises the man as Hunter, one of the former prison inmates she had a confrontation with. Not knowing what to do, she phones Arthur, and she asks him to get Hunter's address to see if he might have taken Rosie there.

In the meantime Rosie notices that Hunter is sleeping, and he uses the moment to make her escape, but then she hears him behind her. Running fast, she sees a vehicle, and then suddenly, she is knocked to the ground. 

Hannah is relieved to see Rosie arrive, and she is surprised to see Peter and Stout. They tell her that they have arrested Arthur on suspicion of murdering Theo, Mel and Cleeves and kidnapping Rosie. The detectives explain that Arthur was the psychologist in Redwood, the home where Theo and Mel had been in. Theo was sent there because he started the fire which killed his sister because he hated her. When he confessed the crime to his father, he sent him to Redwood adn Arthur was his therapist and knew the truth. It was Cleeves, who worked in REdwood, who arranged for Theo to go to the Brices. And then Theo wanted to tell the truth about his crime, and Arthur realised he would be in trouble for concealing the truth, so he killed him. The same case happened with Mel. She killed a baby who was babysitting, and her father, who was friends with Crispin, knew what Theo had done because Crispin had told him one night when he was drunk. Richard Gillespie sent Mel to Redwood, and just recently when he heard about Theo, she went to Arthur, demanding he tell the police that he was also in Redwood. Feeling cornered Arthur killed her, and the same happened with Cleeves. And he was also afraid that Rosie may learn from Frank that he was the man who came asking after Mel, so that is why he paid Hunter.

I liked the mystery, but the end was not as good as the rest. The resolution was a bit over the top.