Does murder in the Carribean make you think of Miss Marple Ricky g a nasty case of sun stroke on an island with white sandy beaches? If so the first book reviewed here might change your mind.
In Black Rain Falling ((Sphere) Jacob Ross has his protagonist Michael 'Digger'Digson investigate a case involving murder and drug smuggling on the island of Camaho, a thinly disguised Grenada. Along the way he encounters rivalries within the police, political corruption and the legacy of his own family history.
Ross also turns a pretty clear eye to wider areas of island life that the tourist brochures tend to ignore. Including endemic cronyism, poverty, the long shadow of colonialism and the cultural and personal impact of toxic masculinity. All of which is a long way way from simplistic narratives about happy islanders playing steel drums and relaxing on the beach.
Ross does so in prose that shows him to have an unerring eye for sporting the tangled mix of beauty and badness and a musicians eat for the distinctive speech of the region.
Literary crime fiction all too often hides the mediocre behind a tho veneer of pretension. Jacob Ross though is the real deal, he has delivered a novel that manages to do all the things a good piece of crime writing should, as well as having worthwhile things to say about the society it is set in. That should be more than enough to earn it and him a place in the canon of great Carribean writing.
When Angels Sleep (Piatkus), by Mark Griffin also turns over a few of the crime genres more tired tropes. The book opens with the body of a child being found neatly arranged in Epping Forest, suggesting that the capital's latest serial killer is setting out his stall. This is the second outing for forensic psychologist Holly Wakefield, a woman with almost as many dark areas in her psyche as the killers she helps the police track down.
Two things save this book from being another familiar trip down the weedy trail blazed by legions of troubled investigators. First of all Wakefield is made human and therefore likeable by her flaws. Second Griffin writes about people who kill and kill again in a determinedly realistic way.
There are no crazed geniuses of slavering monsters to be found here, his killers are, mostly, men defined by all the things they aren't. Like capable of forming a settled identity or having empathy with their fellow creatures. That makes what could have been a safety formulaic book into an often rather chilling one.
From a setting Dame Christie used to the sort of book she might have written had she been working now. The Lazarus Charter (The Conrad Press) by Tony Bassett displays, in the best possible way, many of the characteristics of a classic British B movie.
These are evident from the moment Bob Shaw encounters an old friend who is supposed to have died weeks earlier on the London Underground. An incident that involves Bob and his wife Annie in a plot concerning a secret weapons system, Russian agents trying to steal it and lengths our own intelligence services will go to to stop them. A situation they respond to with a mixture of resourcefulness and good humour that is, ahem, rather uniquely British.
The result is, this reviewer would be the first to admit, more that a little improbable; and splendid fun nevertheless. At times like these books that provide a diversion and do the important job of cheering us all up are performing a vital national service.
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