Review: THE CROSSING, Matt Brolly

• 
  #1 of 5 books, available on Kindle
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07T73RLVN
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Thomas & Mercer (February 14, 2020)
  
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 333 pages

Synopsis (Amazon) 

An Amazon Charts bestseller.

In a small town full of secrets, everyone’s a suspect.

When a body is discovered, bled dry on a beach, the sleepy seaside town of Weston-super-Mare wakes up to a nightmare. For Detective Inspector Louise Blackwell, recently transferred to the town she last saw as a child, it’s her first case on the job.

The victim—Veronica Lloyd, an elderly volunteer at a local church—has puncture wounds to her hands. When a priest is found killed in a nearby church in a similarly grisly condition, it becomes clear that Blackwell is dealing with a righteous and bloody murderer. But the victims aren’t random. The killer has a vendetta and is hell-bent on exacting twisted revenge for a dark secret dating back years—and there are more murders planned.

As the body count rises, Blackwell faces a race against time to solve the mystery of the murderer’s identity and put an end to the carnage. She thought she knew Weston, but the town holds more secrets than she’d ever have imagined. Who can she trust and who knows more than they are letting on?

She must discover the crimes that unite the victims—before it’s too late.

My Take

There are elements in this first-in-a-series novel that have been common to a number of crime fiction novels recently: female detective, life made more difficult for her by male colleagues than it need be, appears to make a mistake, penalised by her superiors; misses out on promotion, relocated to a position now seen as a demotion, has to step straight up to the plate, with a very puzzling case.

This novel has a well thought out and intriguing plot, with a central character who is at the same time likeable and has potential. 

My rating: 4.5

About the author

Following his law degree, where he developed an interest in criminal law, Matt Brolly completed his master’s in creative writing at Glasgow University.

He is the bestselling author of the DCI Lambert crime novels Dead Water, Dead Eyed, Dead Lucky, Dead Embers and Dead Time; the acclaimed near-future crime novel Zero; and the US-based thriller The Controller.

Matt also writes children’s books as M. J. Brolly. His first is The Sleeping Bug.

Matt lives in London with his wife and their two young children. You can find out more about Matt at www.mattbrolly.co.uk or by following him on Twitter: @MattBrollyUK.

Review: DEADLY WATERS, Pauline Rowson

Severn House, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7278-6555-7, 214 pages

The body of the head teacher of a local school is found in Langston Harbour, Portsmouth, along with a wad of money wrapped up in a five pound note and smothered with honey. The head teacher's car is missing, and her body is actually found out on the mulberry in the harbour, so it had to have been taken there by boat. As the investigation proceeds other nursery rhyme clues crop up, and there is another murder. The investigation team is led by DI Andy Horton about to be supplanted because of recent indiscretions.

DEADLY WATERS has a complex plot but I struggled to keep the threads together in my mind despite the relative shortness of the book. A certain amount of tension is generated by the fact that Andy Horton is given just a week to solve the case by his superior, Superintendent Uckfield. Horton is fighting a personal battle to gain access to his daughter and to sort his own life out. The investigation is hampered by people providing false alibis

This is the fourth title in Pauline Rowson's "marine" mysteries (but only the second in the Andy Horton titles). The problems I had in focussing on the plot of this book may perhaps be attributable to the fact that I have not read earlier titles. According to Pauline Rowson's own website DEADLY WATERS, which I read in hardback, will be available in paperback in April 2009.

My rating 4.2

The Andy Horton series

1. Tide of Death (2006)

2. Deadly Waters (2007)
3. The Suffocating Sea (2008)
4. Dead Man's Wharf (2009)

Coincidentally today I got a promotional email from Pauline Rowson's marketing agent, titled Crime Writer's Unsolved Family Murder Mystery. On the website the same information is available under the title Fiftieth Anniversary of Crime Writer's Unsolved Family Murder.

It continues
Not every crime writer has personal experience of murder in their family but on the fiftieth anniversary of her great aunt’s brutal killing, Pauline Rowson, author of the popular series of marine mysteries featuring the flawed and rugged Inspector Horton, takes time to remember Martha Giles’s unlawful killing on 12 February 1959, and one mystery that it appears she will never be able to solve. Read more

Schützenfest in Adelaide - German crime fiction

We are off to the Schützenfest today. Lovely weather- mid 20s - and my family plays in the Klemzig Oompah band. See more at Schützenfest website.

It occurred to me though how little German crime fiction I have read - almost none really - so perhaps people can suggest some I can look out for.

I know there are writers of German crime and mystery fiction because when I was last in Germany I visited a number of bookshops looking for books in English, of which there were very few. But the crime sections were always very large, some translated from English, but obviously lots of German writers too. Perhaps they just don't get translated into English.

So what have I read?
Last year oz_mystery_readers discussed THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD by John Le Carre. Not German I know, but about the cold war days, before the wall came down. I have been to Germany both before and after the Berlin Wall came down. Two years ago prosperity and commercialism were beginning to seep into the east.
Regarded as a classic in spy thrillers. Alec Leamas, for 4 years head of British espionage in Berlin, loses yet another double agent, when a spy crossing from East Berlin is shot by the border guards. He returns to London a broken man and Control offers him a final chance, one last task, to get back at Mundt, the head of East German espionage whom he holds responsible for the lost agents. Leamus has to appear to be discarded in order to become attractive to East German intelligence and open to defection. The story in this relatively short novel has so many twists and turns that you don’t really see what will happen at the end until it actually happens, and then you understand that this is where everything was leading all the time.

A couple of years ago we discussed STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS by Faye Kellerman. Again not a German writer I know.
Axel Berg is an Inspektor in Munich's newly formed Mordkommission. The year is 1929 and the Austrian Adolf Hitler is on the rise. He leads those who want to rid Germany of degenerates, Jews, Communists. The police force that Berg belongs to is underpaid and corrupt and ill equipped to deal with the growing Brown Shirt menace, young drunken hooligans who are manipulated by Hitler and muder and attack 'degenerates'. Lustmord — the joy of murder. The terrifying concept seems apt for the brutal slaying of a beautiful young society wife dumped in the vast English Garden. Homicide inspector Axel Berg is horrified by the crime...and disturbed by the artful arrangement of the victim's clothes and hair — a madman's portrait of death. Berg's superiors demand quick answers and a quick arrest: a vagrant, the woman's husband, anyone who can be demonized will do. When a second body is discovered, the city erupts into panic, the unrest fomented by the wild-eyed, hate-mongering Austrian Adolf Hitler and his Brownshirt party of young thugs. Berg can trust no one as he relentlessly hunts a ruthless killer, dodging faceless enemies and back-alley intrigue, struggling to bring a fiend to justice before the country — and his life — veer straight into darkness.

A couple of years ago I reviewed BROTHER GRIMM by Craig Russell, interesting because it was published simultaneously in English and German, as, I think, at least one later book was.
A girl's body has turned up on a Hamburg beach with a note concealed in her hand. The note gives her name, that of a 13 year old who went missing on her way home from school 3 years earlier. But it is not the same girl. Fabel has worked this out even before her parents come to identify the body and confirm his suspicions. Then two more bodies turn up, posed at a picnic table in the woods, also with notes concealed in their hands. The notes say Hansel and Gretel, in the same tiny, obsessively neat writing.
For English-language readers BROTHER GRIMM is basically a police procedural in a different setting. There are a few differences in the police hierarchy and methods but basically I think this is a book that could be set anywhere. Having said that, great pains have been taken to relate to the German audience. The book was released simultaneously in English and as a German translation. The setting of BROTHER GRIMM is very Germanic. I don't think I will ever look at Grimm's fairy tales in quite the same way again. It helps if the reader has a passing knowledge of the best-known of them.

And I have to mention.. one of the first books I ever wrote a 'proper' review for
THE MASK OF ATREUS by A.J. Hartley
There are really two beginning points for this thriller/mystery. In the dying days of World War Two, a German tank convoy escorting a truck is intercepted by an American platoon. In the skirmish that follows most of the Germans are killed and the rest flee leaving the truck behind. Inside the truck is a single crate stencilled with the German eagle and swastika. The contents of this crate are pivotal to the rest of the story. The story then leaps to the present day. At 3 am Deborah Miller, curator of a small private museum in Atlanta, Georgia, is awoken by her third strange phone call for the night. This one sends her hurrying back to the museum which she had left only just after midnight after a successful promotional evening. At the museum, in a room she did not even know existed, she finds the body of Richard Dixon, her mentor and the museum's founder and director. On the shelves around the room is a treasure trove of what seem to be genuine Mycenaean antiquities. The reader unravels the mystery, essentially the story of why Richard was killed, in THE MASK OF ATREUS through Deborah's eyes, travelling to Greece and Russia, patching together an incredible story.

So what can you add to my TBF (to be found) list? Not that I need more to read, you understand.

Missing Children

I am currently reading THE PURE IN HEART by Susan Hill. #2 in the Simon Serrailler series. The first real case in the book is the apparent kidnapping of a 9 year old boy as he stands on the footpath outside his home waiting for his ride to school.
And as Serrailler's assistant Detective Sergeant Nathan Coates thinks..
What can it be like to go out one morning and everything's hunky-dory, and at the end of the day, wham, your kid's gone, just... gone? Jesus.

Lying in bed last night, I started thinking about books that I've read that tackled this theme. A mental trawl of my database brought up these..

INVOLUNTARY WITNESS by Gianrico Carofiglio
Not an optimistic one because the boy is found dead and so the book is about the attempt to lay the blame.
A Senegalese peddlar working on the beaches of Bari in southern Italy has been accused of the murder of a young boy, whose body was found down a well 12 kilometers away. Guido Guerrieri, Counsel for the Defence, originally advises the accused to opt for a "short trial", a method in which the accused basically pleads guilty and gets a reduced sentence because of that. But the accused says he is not guilty and although he thinks the case is hopeless Guido also believes him. This novel is an Italian prize winner, translated into English. It is Carofiglio's debut novel, won a number of literary awards, and also already become the basis for an Italian TV series. Very different view of Italian justice system to Donna Leon. But then Bari is not Venice.

Then of course IN THE WOODS by Tana French
Three 12 years olds are playing in the woods at Knocknaree and then there is one. The other two vanish and the remaining child Adam Ryan is in a catatonic state and remembers nothing. Life goes on but the two children are never found and Adam Ryan becomes detective Rob Ryan. Twenty years on the woods are to be demolished to make way for a motorway. When protesters assert that the woods are of archaelogical significance they are given time to excavate and to retrieve anything of value. Then the body of a young girl is found near the excavation site, and Rob Ryan is part of the team assigned the case. He knows he should declare his conflict of interest but he doesn't. Gradually as the investigation develops the layers of his memory onion peel back and he gets closer to the truth. A strong debut novel that tackles an idea others have tackled before

BLACK SECONDS by Karin Fossum
Helga Joner has often thought that her nine year old daughter Ida is too good to be true, too good to last. The disappearance of a child is every parent’s worst nightmare. When Ida fails to arrive home from the shop, Helga feels she had been rehearsing the moment for years. First Helga and her sister Ruth scour the streets where they might find Ida, without success, and then they ring the police. Helga feels that somehow she has tempted fate, setting off an inevitable chain of events.
When Inspector Konrad Sejer arrives at her house, Helga feels instinctively that he will find Ida. As time passes Sejer becomes concerned that no trace has been found of Ida or the bright yellow bicycle she rode to the shop. One hundred and fifty volunteers search for Ida without success. Eight days later there are still no clues, the search is to be scaled down, and a chance comment by Helga to Sejer gives them something new to work on.

from a couple of years back in my reading
NO TRACE by Barry Maitland
In this work Maitland turns his focus on an artistic community where one of the leading artists, Gabriel Rudd, has won England’s most controversial art awards, the Turner Prize, with a painting he completed after the death of his wife. Now his daughter has disappeared, and two other young girls have also gone missing at the same time. Rudd begins to work on an art installation based on the grief he is experiencing for his lost daughter Tracey.

and ON BEULAH HEIGHT by Reginald Hill
Andy Dalziel's worst case was when 3 little girls went missing at Dendale, a small community where a dam was being built. They were never found and Benny Lightfoot, the man suspected of their disappearance, disappeared without trace too. The valley was flooded and the crime was never solved. Most of the families moved into a neighbouring valley, and now, 15 years on, another little girl has gone missing. But little Betsy Lightfoot had survived 15 years ago, and now she has come back to the area. She was 7 years old when Dendale was drowned. And it seems too that Benny is back.

Susan Hill

Finally I've managed to get around to finishing reading the first book for 2008. I'd heard a lot of good things about this book, and while it won't be my best read for 2008, it will be in my top 10 for a while.

THE VARIOUS HAUNTS OF MEN by Susan Hill
Detective Sergeant Freya Graffham has arrived in the small cathedral town of Lafferton to join DCI Simon Serrailler's team. She makes new friends in the town rather more easily than she expected, especially through Serrailler's mother who is a local social identity, and his sister, one of the town's doctors.
Angela Randall, a woman in her fifties has disappeared without trace while out walking on the Hill in the fog. Halfway up the Hill loom the Wern Stones, ancient standing stones, that loom "like three witches squatting around a cauldron". There is nothing to link this disappearance with any other case it seems, but there is also a young man who disappeared on the Hill while out jogging, and then there is Jim William's vanished dog Skippy. Simon Serailler's sister, Dr. Cat Deerborn has concerns of her own: a friend who has what seems to be terminal cancer, and then some alternative medicine practitioners whose practices can be downright dangerous.
I loved the way this book is structured: several voices clamouring for the reader's attention; new characters to be explored; and strands that don't quite come together until towards the end. #1 in the Simon Serrailler series.

I do like to start a series at the beginning and read them in order.
I feel excited at prospect of reading the next two:
THE PURE IN HEART (2005)
THE RISK OF DARKNESS (2006)
I have both lurking among the 20+ library books waiting on my shelves.
And then apparently there are two more to be published this year
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/h/susan-hill/

Detective teams and Romantic involvement

This post is inspired by my current read, THE VARIOUS HAUNTS OF MEN by Susan Hill.
It is labelled as a Simon Serrailler crime novel - in fact it is the first in the series.
Detective Sergeant Freya Graffham has recently joined D. I. Simon Serrailler's team in the cathedral town of Lafferton and has realised that she has (almost at first sight) fallen in love with him. She has found out through a mutual friend that he has this effect on all women, and despite apparently extending friendship, never commits himself to romantic involvement. I still have about 200 pages to go, so am now wondering how Freya is going to resolve this. It is the last thing she needs at the start of her career.

The second novel that springs to mind is PHOENIX by John Connor. I am actually listening to it on CD and am about half way through. D.C. Karen Sharpe has newly come to the Pennines from London and joined a team being headed by D.C.S John Munro. Munro has taken up waiting outside Karen's house for her to come home late at night. He is obviously very attracted to her and she to him. They are sharing confidences but any relationship is in early days. Romantic involvement with him seems to be about the last thing she needs. She seems to have some deep dark secret in her past which is likely to affect any relationship she has.

Now the other example I have in my recent reading is CLEAN CUT by Lynda la Plante. This is the third in the Anna Travis series. Anna's romantic involvement with D.C.I James Langton began early on in ABOVE SUSPICION, the first in the series, continued in the second THE RED DAHLIA, and by CLEAN CUT they are living together, although they have not been working on the same cases for about 12 months.
When Langton is horrifically injured in a murder arrest that goes wrong, Anna becomes vital to his recovery. While Langton is still in hospital, Anna is assigned to a new case where a librarian is found dead by her twelve year old daughter returning from school. The suspect in this case is yet another violent rapist released from prison far too early. And then, perhaps a little predictably, the case Anna is working on and the one Langton was working on when he was attacked become linked. This a long and complex novel, with an ending that ensures there will be yet another sequel.

What other examples can you think of?
What is leading modern writers to include this sort of element in their plots?
Is it to make the point that romantic/sexual involvement between members of a team can impair sound decision-making? Surely we already knew that.
Or, and this may just be the cynic in me speaking, is it to make the crime fiction genre more palatable/attractive to those who like some romance/spice in their reading?
My other question relates to whether the author is assuming that readers will consume these books in order. Perhaps they are aiming at capturing an audience and then working within the framework that that audience enjoys.