Low ranking coppers are relatively rare in British Cri-Fi. Most central characters are Detective Inspectors. A wise choice, because their rank enables them access to both the grim reality of crime scenes and the frequently fraught pretense of scheduled media briefings. Here, it seems that David Smith, despite being close to retirement age, is still a Detective Sergeant, albeit a very good one. Smith is something of a paradox in that he is both straightforward and complex. His relatively simple approach to detective work involves observation, recording, listening – and then more observation.
We know that he has been demoted from a more senior rank due to a case that went badly wrong. He is a widower, and lives quietly on his own, but we suspect the shade of his wife Sheila is never far away. Despite his appearance – dressed in clean, but slightly shabby, ‘old men’s’ clothes – he is a closet guitarist, and an admirer of both the old blues men and Eric Clapton.This book was first self-published in 2016, but has now been reprinted by Hutchinson Heinemann.
Central to the story is the death of a teenager, found dead in the river after he was last seen diving in, and playing high jinx with a passing canoeist. The setting is the Norfolk town of Kings Lake. A pseudonym for Kings Lynn? Possibly, but not in terms of the river. Lynn’s river, the Great Ouse is very wide, very dirty and very deep – and not the sort of water anyone in their right minds would jump into. This river has more the feel of one of the rivers that make up the Norfolk Broads, full of pleasure boats and picturesque riverside pubs.
When the dead boy’s body is examined, it shows mysterious bruises, and tell-tale signs that someone had tried to administer CPR. Smith persuades his boss that they have, at best a manslaughter on their hands, and possibly a murder. The early investigation centres on the canoeist with whom the dead boy may have had a confrontation. The canoe was hired by ‘a foreign-sounding man’, and Smith, exploring the riverbank a few miles upstream, discovers what is left of it – in the ashes of a bonfire. Nearby is a former stately home, now surrounded by top security fences and – as Smith discovers when he wanders in through a gap in the fence – staffed by serious ex-military types.
Through an old contact, Smith makes enquiries about the man in charge, a suave former army officer. It seems he spent some time in Bosnia in the 1990s, and when a cigarette packet found on the river bank is identified as Bosnian brand, the investigation takes a sinister – and potentially dangerous turn. I wonder if Hutchinson Heinemann was one of the mainstream publisher who rejected this book back when it was first written? Grainger (real name Robert Partridge) subsequently successfully self-published a whole series of novels featuring Detective Sergeant Smith, but now they are being reissued, with the full weight of a major publishing house in support.
Like God, publishing ‘moves in mysterious ways’, but this novel, with its thoughtful, serious and undemonstrative central character. made for good reading, and I hope it reaches a wider audience. The plot took an intriguing twist about half way through, and, with the case solved, there was a rather beautiful and poignant conclusion to the book. It will be available on 30th April.
This is the fourth book in a series featuring Norfolk copper DCI Greg Geldard, but author Heather Peck (left) wastes no time in providing all the back-story we need. Geldard is divorced from his former wife, Isabelle, who is a professional singer. She has now remarried a celebrated orchestral conductor, with whom she has a child, while Geldard is in a relationship with one of his colleagues, DS Chris Mathews. When he gets an early morning ‘phone call from Isabelle saying she and her son have been threatened by a foreign criminal connected to one of Geldard’s previous cases, he is forced to stay at arm’s length, but is disturbed to hear from a colleague that Isabelle may be making the story up.
The next stage of our journey is to a town that doesn’t exist – at least on an Ordance Survey map. Writers have always created fictional towns based on real places – think Thomas Hardy’s Casterbridge, Trollope’s Barchester, Arnold Bennett’s Bursley, Herriot’s Darrowby, and Dylan Thomas’s Llareggub – but remember that each was based on a real life place well known to the writer. Thus we drive along a road that skirts the windswept and muddy shores of The Wash until we arrive in Boston, Lincolnshire. It was here that the journalist and writer Colin Watson lived and worked for many years, and it was in Boston’s image that he created Flaxborough – the home and jurisdiction of Inspector Walter Purbright.
Here on the coast of The Wash we can, if we wish, still measure the seasons by produce. I say “if we wish”, because supermarkets have no seasons – everything is available all the year round. But in the old fashioned world of buying food when it is fresh and local, the year has its own rhythm. Early summer gives us asparagus, followed by strawberries. In autumn and winter Brancaster mussels and native oysters are delicious, but for me, the true treasure of the summer months is samphire. This plant of the coastal marshes, Crithmum maritimum, allegedly gets its name from a corruption of the French “St Pierre”, but whatever its etymology, it is utterly delicious. Lightly boiled or steamed, it is best eaten with the fingers. Running the stems through your teeth to strip off the flesh is a completely sybaritic sensation. Local folk love it with vinegar, but with butter and coarsely ground pepper it is little short of heavenly.
Shaw and George Valentine series with At Death’s Window. In addition to solving a series of burglaries at properties along the Norfolk coast owned by wealthy out-of-towners, Shaw and Valentine become involved in a turf war between product dealers. These are not your common-or-garden drug barons, or even owners of ice cream vans, but dealers in samphire! As I have illustrated, with a 300% mark-up available for an item that can be had for nothing, why bother with something as illegal and potentially lethal as narcotics? The problem in At Death’s Window comes when local folk are muscled off their home territory by criminal gangs using illegal immigrants as pickers. Think cockles and the Morecambe Bay tragedy, and you can see how it all might go pear-shaped.
fullybooked2017 