It is typical of Piers Paul Read that he should preface [A Married Man] with an Author's Note informing American readers about the difference in the English legal system between a solicitor and a barrister. Typical in that it recalls the generally sober, just-the-facts-please tone Read has assumed in previous novels like Monk Dawson and The Professor's Daughter, especially in the extended flatness of Polonaise. Read depends on the clarity and intelligence with which he states, rather than explores, his fictional materials…. Read contrives a shocker of a plot which convinced me of little more than that it was a shocker of a plot. For all the dispassionately careful observation in his writing, it's hard to escape the feeling that, in more than one sense, the hero has been fixed, his situation more relentlessly contrived than freely explored. (p. 259)
William H. Pritchard, "Fictional Fixes," in The Hudson Review (copyright © 1980 by The Hudson Review, Inc.; reprinted by permission), Vol. XXXIII, No. 2, Summer, 1980, pp. 256-70.∗
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