We are in the streets – some decidedly mean but others rather splendid – of Minneapolis for this pacy thriller, the latest saga in the career of private investigator Nils Shapiro who works in an agency with two other PIs, Annika and Eglaand. Lukas Day, a junior hedge fund manager has been found in his apartment, butchered with a kitchen knife. The chief suspect is the woman who was recently in his bed, Paige Willett. Who just happens to be the wife of Day’s boss.
Jonathan Willett is a hugely successful hedge fund trader, and has made billions by being ruthless, uncompromising and determined to win at every single aspect of his life. Willett hires Shapiro to find out who killed Lukas Day. Shapiro soon finds that both Jonathan and Paige have what is euphemistically known as an open marriage and are fairly repulsive human beings, for different reasons, but being an old fashioned kind of man, he determines to get to the truth, unhindered by his negative feelings for his clients.
The initial alternative suspects are all friends and family; we have Reeves Fleetwood, Willett’s former business partner and now serious competitor; we have Willett’s first wife Cecilia, and their son Vincent, who has mental issues; the there’s Benjamin, Willett’s brother, tasked withe unenviable task of looking after their father, now in the grip of dementia; how about Brooke Stolle, Lukas Day’s actual girlfriend?
CriFi buffs will find Shapiro doesn’t depart too far from the well traveled and much loved template for an American PI. He is handsome, smart, a former police officer and, while he doesn’t wisecrack with other characters, he does share his trenchant observations with readers. He is both unlucky and unfortunate in love. He is divorced from his first wife, and his second – a senior Minneapolis police officer, died of wounds sustained in a shoot-out three years earlier.
Jonathan Willett has a mania for antiques and, in particular Chinese artifacts including ancient porcelain. The trio at the Stone Arch Investigations, now joined by a former British police officer Shanae, come up with a possible theory. For all Willett’s acquisitive energy, it seems like the main kick he gets from buying the antiques is the knowledge that if he has them, no-one else can. The actual grace, history and intrinsic beauty of the vases and and sculptures appears to escape him, and he is quite happy to have them stored away in a cellar. What if, then, Benjamin Willett – a talented potter – has been ‘borrowing’ vases from his brother’s house, making detailed copies of them, returning the copies to the house, but selling on the originals? Already in Shapiro’s sights is a mysterious warehouse on the edge of town, a place with intense 24/7 security, and apparently run by an elderly Chinese man known as Mr Tu (who is, as they say, ‘known’ to the FBI). In the end the killer of Lukas Day is unmasked, and all I will say is that the murderer’s identity is a surprise – but not a shock. This entertaining and immersive thriller is published by Severn House Crime and Thriller and is available now.
