Blackwater by James Henry

The Blurb On The Back:

January 1983, Colchester CID

A new year brings new resolutions for Detective Inspector Nicholas Lowry. With one eye on his approaching fortieth birthday, he has given up his two greatest vices: smoking, and the police boxing team. As a result, the largest remaining threat to his health is now his junior colleague’s reckless driving.

If Detective Constable Daniel Kenton’s orange sports convertible is symbolic of his fast track through the ranks, then his accompanying swagger, foppish hairstyle and university education only augment his uniqueness in the department. Yet regardless of this, it is not DC Kenton who is turning station heads.

WPC Jane Gabriel is the newest police recruit in Britain’s oldest recorded town. Despite a familial tie to top brass, Gabriel’s striking beauty and profound youth have landed her with two obstacles: a young male colleague who gives her too much attention, and an older one who acts like she’s not there.

January 1983, Blackwater Estuary

A new year brings a new danger to the Essex shoreline. An illicit shipment, bound for Colchester – 100 kilograms of power that will frantically accelerate tensions in the historic town, and leave its own murderous trace.

Lowry, Kenton and Gabriel must now develop a tolerance to one another, and show their own substance, to save Britain’s oldest settlement from a new, unsettling enemy.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The first in a historical crime series by James Henry (a pseudonym for James Gurbutt) is an intriguing affair set in a period of change for the UK police force. Lowry is an interesting protagonist (oblivious of the issues in his home life while confronting the notion of masculinity) and although Kenton and Gabriel are more thinly characterised, the mystery neatly unfolds to draw its various plot strands together in a satisfying way.

The Last Place You Look by Kristen Lepionka

The Blurb On The Back:

Sarah Cook, a beautiful blonde teenager disappeared fifteen years ago, the same night her parents were brutally murdered in their suburban Ohio home. Her boyfriend Brad Stockton – black and from the wrong side of the tracks – was convicted of the murders and sits on death row, though he always maintained his innocence. With his execution only weeks away, his devoted sister, insisting she has spotted Sarah at a local gas station, hires PI Roxane Weary to look again at the case.

Reeling from the recent death of her cop father, Roxane finds herself drawn to the story of Sarah’s vanishing act, especially when she thinks she’s linked Sarah’s disappearance to one of her father’s unsolved murder cases involving another teen girl. Despite her self-destructive tendencies, Roxane starts to hope that maybe she can save Brad’s life and her own.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Kristen Lepionka’s crime novel (the first in a series) has a PI heroine who hits a lot of the detective clichés (an alcoholic whose private life is a mess) but puts enough of a spin on them to keep me interested (notably her bisexuality and the love triangle with femme fatale Catherine and Tom, her dad’s old partner) while the mystery unfolds at a decent pace and had enough twists and turns to hold my interest, such that I’d check out the sequel.