Muder

Murder sites in British crime fiction come in all shapes and sizes: West Country bookshops, greasy subterranean passages under Leeds Station and a twelfth century water mill have featured in my recent reads but, because of our climate we cannot do exotic. We can, however do windswept and bracing. Fitting that bill perfectly is a beach on the storm-lashed island of St Helen’s, one of the Scilly Isles. Home now only to gulls and kittiwakes, it remains the last resting place of the monks who once lived on the island. Scilly Isles copper DI Ben Kitto discovers a much more recent burial and, in doing so, he uncovers evidence of that vilest of vile modern ‘professions’, human trafficking.Kitto’s problems mount.

A new-born baby boy, just about alive, is left on the police station steps and DCI Madron, Kitto’s abrasive boss, is injured in an accident, and then disappears. The Scilly Isles must be a challenging place to be a copper. The islands that make up the archipeligo have, in total, the population of an medim-size English village, so crime ought to be easily solvable. But. And it is a very large ‘but’. Small boats are everything, and most people have access to one. The distances between the main inhabited islands – St Mary’s, Tresco, St Martin’s, St Agnes and Bryher – are relatively short, but the Atlantic Ocean is wild, unpredictable and unforgiving. Crime scenes are difficult to protect, forensic experts have to be flown in from Cornwall, and the frequently vile weather is a challenge to logistics and normal police procedure.

Kitto – who has returned to his birthplace after cutting his teeth in London with the Met – painstakingly gathers evidence about the dead girl and the abandoned baby, reluctantly reaching the conclusion that although international crime gangs may be at the root of the problem, the branches and leaves of this particularly poisonous tree are flourishing in the climate of his own bailiwick, and several prominent and well-respected individuals may be involved. Kitto is an islander to his core, but he is painfully aware of the challenges residence poses.

“The outside world is comfortless though. When I pull back the curtain, breakers are lashing the shore. Seabirds are returning to Bryher in flocks, scattered by the breeze.

It feels like we’re at the mercy of some savage force that’s trying to tear these islands apart.”

The old expression “barking up the wrong tree” has its origins in America, where hunting dogs would be fooled by their prey jumping between adjacent trees to fool their pursuers. It doesn’t sound as if there are many trees on the Scilly Isles, but Ben Kitto barks up at most of them in vain. This isn’t to say he is inept, or a fool. Quite simply, the villain is hiding in plain sight, too close to home. The final pages of Deadman’s Pool are exhilarating and graphic. When Kitto finally exposes the killer, I had to check back to see if Kate Rhodes had given us any clues, but I don’t think she did, so the surprise is even more startling.

I am a suburban man, root and branch, so it baffles me how anyone can remain sane living in such remote places as Barra, the Orkney Islands or the Scilly Isles. Kate Rhodes, however, has been bewitched by the charm of Island life, and she has written a gripping and addictive police procedural set in a frequently intimidating landscape. Deadman’s Pool will be published by Orenda Books on 25th September.

came late to the party regarding Angela Marsons and her Kim Stone series of police procedurals set in England’s West Midlands, but I thoroughly enjoyed Child’s Play (2019) and was very pleased to have the chance to read and review the latest in the series, Killing Minds.

A murder where the body is arranged to make the death look like suicide is a well-worn feature in crime novels, but Marsons takes the trope and gives it new life. When Sammy Brown is found dead in her featureless flat, her throat cut apparently by her own hand, everyone – DI Kim Stone included – is initially prepared to tick the suicide box and move on. It is only when Stone interviews Sammy’s parents that she begins to sense that things are not quite what they appear to be.

Stone has a strong sense that Myles and Kate Brown are concealing something, but it is a second look at the crime scene photographs that triggers her response:

“She stopped speaking as her gaze returned back to the photo of the hand. Something struck her and it was like seeing it for the first time.

She turned the phone and looked at the photo from every angle.

‘Penn, get me a red pen and ruler. Now.'”

eanwhile, Stone’s assistant, DS Bryant, has his own fixation to deal with. He was involved in the capture, trial and conviction of a notorious killer, Peter Drake, and has become involved with Richard Harrison, father of one of Drake’s victims. A previously unrepentant Drake has, suspiciously, turned over a new leaf in jail and has become a model prisoner, thus transforming his application for parole from a forlorn hope into a distinct probability. Both Harrison and Bryant are powerless to prevent Drake’s release. Both have a sense of foreboding about what may follow.

When another body – that of a young man – is discovered in a nearby lake, the fact that he apparently new Sammy Brown sets more alarm bells ringing. After painfully prising the truth – or a version of it – from Sammy Brown’s parents, Stone’s attention is turned on a nearby community, mostly made up of young people who have chosen to step away from real life. They all live in Unity Farm. Sammy Brown was a member of the group – as was the lad in the lake, Tyler Short.

Stone and Bryant pay a visit to Unity Farm, and they meet the leader of the community, Jake Black:

“A man in his mid-fifties appeared behind her. His hair was completely white, but thick and cut well. His shoulders were broad beneath an open-neck pale blue shirt. His skin was smooth with enough colour to radiate good health. His eyes were the purest blue she had ever seen. Once your gaze met those, the rest was forgotten.”

hen Stone makes the decision to send one of her younger officers into Unity Farm, posing as a distressed and unhappy young woman, things do not turn out according to plan and Marsons orchestrates a tense and nerve-shredding finale to the book. When the murderer is unmasked, it came as a cleverly constructed surprise. Killing Mind is published by Bookouture, and is available now.