gervase_fen | Disordered Daggers : The Trawlerman by William Shaw (2021) (Reply)

Detective Inspector Alexandra Cupidi has been signed off work, receiving counselling for PTSD when she prevents a knife attack on a wedding party on Dungeness beach. Restless, bored, and against medical advice, she starts digging deeper in to why the woman in the grey mac accused her ex-daughter-in-law, the bride, of murder. Meanwhile Alex’s team has been called out to a shocking murder scene, the bodies discovered by that most contemporary of witnesses, a home delivery driver. Alex is told to stay away from the case – but she wants to know why the couple ordered groceries they didn’t need. And did Alex’s daughter’s friend really see the couple’s souls depart as he stood in a beer garden late on a balmy summer evening?

William Shaw makes it all seem effortless here – the sense of place, the plot construction, the characterisation – and the obvious wrong ‘un that Alex meets doesn’t get away scot-free. His depiction of Alex’s PTSD and its impact on her seventeen year old daughter is always convincing, and the solution to the mystery of the night time ghosts is satisfyingly old school (cf. “The Problem of Thor Bridge” (1922)). This was a pleasure to read, and I should really go back and catch up on the previous books in the series.