Payment in Blood by Elizabeth George (1989)

 "Dad?"  Barbara repeated.  He gave no answer. She walked into the room, lowered the volume, and turned to him.  He was asleep, his jaw slack, the tubes that fed him oxygen askew in his nostrils.  Racing magazines covered the floor near his chair and a newspaper was open over his knees.  It was too hot in the room, in the entire house for that matter, and the musty smell of her parents' ageing seemed to seep from the walls and the floor and the furniture.  This mixed with a stronger, more recent scent of food overcooked and inedible.                                                                                                                                       -- Elizabeth George, Payment in Blood (Bantam Dell, 1989)

This is the second of George's novels about posh Thomas Lynley and his working class partner at Scotland Yard Barbara Havers, who in this book are assigned to investigate a murder in Scotland among an acting and producing group gathered for rehearsals.  A continuity in the novels involves Lynley's infatuation with Lady Helen Clyde, who turns up in Scotland, sleeping with one of the actors, and not only provokes Lynley's jealousy but his jealousy interferes with the investigation of the murder, as well as a second murder in Scotland.  There are too many suspects and too many red herrings for my taste but George gradually moves to the most likely candidates, with Havers and Lynley both considerably influenced by their respective backgrounds, as everyone in the acting group has a secret in the past or in the present. George's prose is as rich and detailed as in the other two books in this group about which I have posted, and she deftly portrays the complex history and psychology of her characters.