Thorsday Book Review: Pooh Bridge

This was a Kindle book that I found at some point, and decided to read last week.  I was attracted to the name, because, really, who doesn't like Winnie the Pooh?

POOH BRIDGE
by Nigel Lampard
copyright 2012

Richard Blythe's young wife has recently died of cancer, leaving him with 13 year old twins who are away at boarding school.  He decided to go hiking/camping for a few weeks, to cope with this loss; however, a short time into the trip, he stumbled upon a young Asian woman who was unconscious.  While he was off retrieving her lost rucksack, she was murdered.  A few weeks later, while on a business trip to Germany, he decided to make a detour to the address in Germany which he had seen on her passport, met her sister, and was arrested, questioned and released.  All of these events left him wondering what the big deal was about this woman, which had caused her to be murdered.

Some time thereafter, he was invited to Brunei by a business acquaintance to assist in researching a problem; while on the plane, he met a woman who worked for the British Embassy.  Yes, this is all very confusing, but it all tied together, although somewhat tenuously.  The dead wife seemed to have a central role in the story, mostly because Richard kept speaking to her memory for guidance.  The ending was not terribly satisfactory, as it didn't answer the questions about the dead woman very well, but at least it was all tied up.

Oh, and Pooh Bridge refers to a bridge to which Richard and his wife would take the twins to play "Pooh Sticks," which is the game Winnie the Pooh and friends played in their book, where they would drop sticks off the upstream side of the bridge, and then trot to the other side to see whose came through first.  I'm not really sure why that was relevant to the story, other than that it was another memory of Richard's late wife.  2.5/5

Happy Thorsday, everyone!