I had not read any of the Detective Inspector Luke Thanet series before and I read these all at once. In the introduction to the first one, Ms Simpson explains that she spent her professional career as a marriage counselor and that she found some inspiration for her plots in the psychological insights she gained as a therapist. That admission coloured my reading of the books, as did my familiarity with the early run of Midsommer Murders, a long-running UK TV series.

Luke Thanet and Tom Barnaby share a smarminess about their home lives and marriages that I find repulsive. In the case of Luke Thanet, I read Ms Simpson's efforts to teach responsive marriage techniques and her idea of how a married man should act. She even drags DI Thanet's assistant, Mike Lineman, his controlling mother and his suffering wife into it. Yuck.

The mysteries are OK but nothing special.

I don't need this series.

I received review copies of "Close Her Eyes", "Puppet for a Corpse", and "Six Feet Under" by Dorothy Simpson (Open Road Integrated Media) through NetGalley.com. ( )

Very good. I want to look for more by Dorothy Simpson. Suicide looks like murder -- is it? ( )

Somewhat tedious. ( )