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Chief Inspector Jacobson is interrupted while having a pint by a young man who introduces himself as a freelance reporter. Paul Shaw is from London and has never been in Crowby before. Jacobson wonders why he has spoiled a good track record. Paul was out of the country when his cousin, Darren McGee drowned on New Year's Day. Darren, claimed Paul, was a victim of white racists and was murdered. Jacobson was on holiday at the time and his boss, DCS Greg Salter, had headed the investigation. Now Paul is implying that Salter botched the investigation, that he was anxious to close the case and because Darren was poor and black no one complained. Jacobson and his boss generally do not get on well, but Jacobson won't pass him off as completely incompetent, so he dismisses Shaw's arguments. Paul tells him he is investigating on his own and will soon be able to prove that there is a local racist element and they had targeted Darren. When Paul's body is pulled from the same river, Jacobson goes back and reopens Darren's case and investigates both matters. This is an excellent police procedural. Crowby, the fictional town in the Midlands, is generally quiet; indeed it is your average small town. This is, in the author's words, an ordinary town filled with ordinary people. That those same ordinary people do drugs, steal, commit adultery and sometimes murder, makes it the same as small towns everywhere. However, the author is not an ordinary storyteller; the reader is pulled into the story and the book is hard to put down. McDowall admits that he was greatly influenced by John Harvey's Charlie Resnick series. I didn't know that when I was reading the book, but his attention to details, both big and small, reminded me in some ways of the Resnick books. This is the fourth book in the series, and now I have to get my hands on the other three. McDowall is an author who deserves more publicity and a chance to get his books out to a wider audience.
Reviewed by Lorraine Gelly, January 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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