Donna Leon "Death and Judgment"

Corruption, and how far up the national and provincial pecking orders, are a constant theme through Donna Leon’s Brunetti mysteries, and there’s a particularly chilling example of how far at the end of Death and Judgment (also known as A Venetian Reckoning)

Having resolved the circumstances surrounding two obvious murders and an apparent suicide in the early hours of the morning Brunetti, dog tired, retreats home for a few hours’ sleep before he tidies up the formal side of things. He’s got a culprit, and a confession, the suspect’s safely locked up so everything ought to be cut and dried.

Six hours later he’s back at the Questura, only to find there had been a phone call from the Ministry of Justice in the meantime and some men from Special Branch showed up with some papers three hours earlier with orders to transfer the prisoner to Padua.

Earlier he’d written a short report, giving the substance of his conversations with the prisoner, and left it for Vice-Questore Patta or his acolyte Lieutenant Scarpa.  The prisoner suicides in a cell in Padua, nothing can be proved, and the breach of standard procedure gives Patta an excuse to tear strips off Brunetti. That’s a bit rich when there would seem to be only two sources who could have passed the details on to the higher ups...

And earlier, when the evidence at autopsy reveals a level of barbiturates in the apparent suicide’s bloodstream inconsistent with the perceived circumstances the official report on the procedure sees the quantity halved with the coroner’s notes and the relevant samples having gone missing.

Death and Judgment starts with one of those incidents that don’t appear to be tied in with the solution to the case by providing the motive for the murder. In this case the incident involves a crash where a truck carrying a load of timber crashes off a snow covered road in the in the Dolomite mountains of northern Italy, spilling its load, which includes eight unidentified women across the mountain side.

The murder, or at least the first of three murders, has a prominent lawyer shot on an express train from Torino, with the body being found as the train crosses the lagoon heading in to Venice. Carlo Trevisan was an expert on international law, is apparently a clean, family man and there’s no obvious reason why anyone would want him dead. Since the corpse still has his wallet, you can rule out robbery as a motive. He’s also a friend of the mayor and his wife is the secretary of the Lions Club, so when Patta assigns him the case Brunetti is instructed to use the utmost discretion.

Two days later his accountant, who also happens to be his brother-in-law is found dead in his car, shot three times, at close range, apparently by someone who was sitting beside him in the front seat.

In between those two there’s the apparent suicide and about the only thing Brunetti and his colleagues have to go on are a list of phone numbers in his address book that don’t have names beside them. One is Trevisan’s and another is a seedy bar that links both to a network of slave traders and pornographers that reaches beyond the Venetian laguna through Eastern Europe and as far afield as Ecuador and Thailand.

That provides the link to the truck crash, but it’s still a matter of finding the murderer, which is going to be a little tricky since the top level of the network are eminent Italians virtually untouchable by the police.

Brunetti, on the other hand, with Signorina Elettra on his side, can call in a favour from a judge, and has a teenage daughter who went to the same school as Trevisan’s daughter. All of them add something to the investigation, though when Chiara provides one of the key links towards the end, Brunetti ends up wishing she hadn’t.

This fourth title in the Commissario Brunetti series has its origins in a newspaper article Leon read during the Bosnian war and as the plot line unfolds Brunetti’s struggle against a corrupt system provides a fascinating read, particularly when you look at it in the light of the anti-austerity protests currently taking place across Europe.

Donna Leon "Death in a Strange Country"

Having suggested Donna Leon has managed to land a fully formed character in the first Commissario Brunetti novel, it should come as no surprise to learn there's no hint of continuity from La Fenice to a Strange Country. Where other writers are still finding their feet with the new character and trying out different possibilities, Death in a Strange Country starts the way most Brunetti stories start, and proceeds gradually, step by step from there.

That means, of course, that there's no need to actually read these stories in sequence, since the only long term key character yet to emerge is Signora Elettra and the only reason she hasn’t turned up yet is because she hasn’t been needed.

In other words you could summarise the plot line with a semi-formulaic Brunetti is going about his ordinary day to day business when he’s called to a crime scene, the investigation meanders along and there’s an eventual resolution of some, though not necessarily all, of the issues raised in the course of the investigation.

Expressed in those terms (and the same is more or less true of anything in the genre) there’s not really that much there, and the devil (or, in this case, the charm) is in the detail the author provides to put some flesh on the bare bones, and it’s here that the distinctions that account for differing tastes come in.

James Lee Burke would people the narrative with a liberal helping of well-realised minor characters, a couple of truly impressive psycho and sociopaths and unearth the odd skeleton in several interlocking closets along the way, with frequent reminders of their own mortality and past failings for  the key players. When you’re talking the detail, that, for mine, is the devil, but it will be played out across a prose landscape that’s immaculately realised in writing that goes close to shining.

Andrea Camilleri will have Montalbano running across the Sicilian landscape, interacting with the regular cast and manipulating things to thwart the Commissioner’s efforts to hamstring him, and the whole thing will proceed at a lively clip with a definite raffish charm.

Donna Leon, on the other hand, with Venice as the backdrop and Brunetti as the ordinary family man thrown in to investigate matters that have more to them than meets the eye, moves things through a narrative that has its twists and turns and while we’re often talking serious matters the interaction of weighty issues and a decent human being are the key ingredient in a very well realised series.

Death in a Strange Country starts with the body of a young man found floating in a Venetian canal.He’s been stabbed, and there’s nothing on the body to identify him, but there were some coins in his pocket, and a look at his teeth convinces the coroner the victim was American, which at least provides a starting point for the investigation.

Given that identity and the fact that his wallet is missing it seems reasonable to assume the killing is a drug-related mugging, though a bit of preliminary checking reveals that the area where the body was found is relatively drug free (the garbage man has never complained of finding syringes on the street in the morning). As far as Brunetti’s superior, Vice-Questore Patta, is concerned, there’s a danger to the city’s tourist trade, so Brunetti had better be smart about finding a suitable culprit. Not necessarily the culprit, a culprit.

To stop him from getting too involved with unnecessary detail Patta hands him the investigation into a burglary from a Grand Canal palazzo which has all the external appearances of an insurance job.

A check around the city’s tourist accommodation fails to deliver any missing Americans, so Brunetti checks with a nearby military base. It’s not the sort of situation where the Italian police can just go barging in, but when the military authorities check around they find, yes, there’s a serviceman who’s gone missing and send in his superior officer to identify the body.

Captain Peters (Doctor Peters if we’re not talking rank), the superior officer, as it turns out, is young, female, attractive and deeply distressed when she views the body, something that doesn’t quite tally with personal detachment and her status as a medical practitioner though, in her own words on the way to the cemetery island, it’s different when you know the person. The reaction, when the identification is made, runs a bit deeper than that.

From there we’re teetering on the brink of spoiler territory, but the victim, Sgt. Michael Foster, apart from his designated position as public health inspector at the American military hospital wears another couple of hats. Brunetti’s visit to the base gives the author a free shot at some of the absurdities of a little America on foreign soil (Burger King, frozen pizza, Baskin Robbins and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in the land of gelato).

Brunetti’s visit to the base, where he checks out Foster’s apartment doesn’t reveal much apart from a couple of plastic bags containing about a kilogram of white powder concealed in a heater. Brunetti removes them, doesn’t say anything about them and carefully empties the contents into one of Venice’s canals on the way back. He’s after the fingerprints on the packets rather than the contents, and when he gets those checked there are two sets of prints, one from the victim, the second possibly female. Hmmm...

A return visit to the apartment reveals someone has checked the hiding place, and a couple of days later Doctor Peters’ death is reported in the Sunday paper, with an overdose as the cause of death and a strong suggestion of suicide.

Since Doctor Peters had told Brunetti she’d spent six years in medical school followed by four years in the Army, and was six months off getting out (I shouldn’t even say I want to go back to my life. I want to start one) it’s fairly obvious (to Brunetti, at least) that someone is going to a great deal of trouble to cover up the reasons for the first murder, is determined to provide a ready-made solution to the crime and isn’t too particular about collateral damage.

Put all that together, and you’ve got the ingredients for an intriguing mystery, and while most of the characters hit the pages fully formed in Death at La Fenice and are unchanged here, there’s an evolutionary step in Brunetti’s relationship with his aristocratic father-in-law. After twenty years of marriage, Brunetti’s still not comfortable in his father-in-law’s presence, but Count Falier definitely has his uses. When you need to find out gossip about a German opera conductor, for instance, a social gathering at the Palazzo Falieri provides an avenue to meet the sort of people who might know.

Here, once the pieces have fallen into place and the deaths of Sergeant Foster and Doctor Peters have been explained, while it’s obvious nothing can be done through official channels a word in the right ear is enough to have the issue dealt with, though it’s fairly obvious no one is entirely happy about it.

Still, there’s no doubting Brunetti’s father-in-law is an integral part of the whole plot resolution puzzle. With his contacts within, and knowledge of, the upper echelons of Italian society he can get Brunetti’s investigations into places that wouldn’t normally be accessible, and when Signora Elettra hits the ground running in the third title in the series everything’s in place, and since that’s the case, the changes in Brunetti’s relationship with the in-laws will, of course, be a narrative strand to watch as I work through the rest of the series in order.

Andrea Camilleri "The Age of Doubt"

Given the fact that Andrea Camilleri usually starts a new Montalbano story around dawn, long term readers will hardly be surprised to learn The Age of Doubt kicks off in the wake of a ferocious overnight thunderstorm that has sent waves over Salvo Montalbano’s front porch and washed out the road into town.

Montalbano’s been jolted into consciousness after a dream about his own death. Entering the station to inform Catarella that he's off on a surprise trip to visit Livia in Genoa, he’s told he can’t go because he’s dead, and can’t investigate the case because he's too personally involved.  Such nocturnal ramblings are never comforting affairs, and Salvo, as he goes about his morning routine, spends his time musing on the significance of the long-suffering Livia’s refusal to attend his funeral. She’s apparently got other, more significant demands on her time.

On his way into work, after a quarter of an hour persuading the car to start and twenty minutes wedged tight in a traffic jam he decides to investigate the cause, and after being immediately soaked straight down to his underpants reaches the head of the queue to find both lanes of the road washed away, a car teetering on the edge of the abyss that’s still being undermined and a young woman just over thirty wearing eyeglasses with lenses as thick as bottle bottoms in the car

Chivalry isn’t dead as far as Montalbano is concerned, and after identifying himself as a police officer he persuades her to join him, first in his car, then to change her clothes and dry out at his villa.

As you do...

There he learns her name is Vanna Digiulio, and she tells Montalbano she was on her way to Vigàta harbour to see her aunt, whose luxury yacht was due to arrive that day. The yacht, coincidentally, happens to be named the Vanna. Given the weather conditions the yacht doesn’t dock until much later than the ten o’clock E.T.A. and when it does dock it’s carrying the disfigured body of a man, face bashed in so he can’t be identified, they’ve collected from a dinghy adrift near the harbour mouth.

That’s an obvious case for the local constabulary, and when Montalbano questions Livia Giovannini, the imperious signora who owns the Vanna, it turns out she doesn’t have a niece.

Given the fact that Salvo’s been harbouring suspicions from when the supposed niece appeared on the scene something definitely smells fishy and as he sets about sniffing out the details he meets Lt. Laura Belladona of the Harbour Office, young, attractive and very much on the ball.

Montalbano, surprise, surprise, is instantly smitten and, interestingly, the attraction appears to be mutual.

The key to the case seems to lie in getting somebody on board the Vanna to investigate what’s going on under the surface, and since the owner case proves to be something approaching a ravenous nymphomaniac Mimi Augello, whose wife has conveniently gone to her parents’ place, is just the man for the undercover under the covers work.

That’s about as far as one can go without letting one of several cats out of the bag, but in The Age of Doubt Camilleri has once again delivered an interesting well-paced mystery the usual linguistic mangling from Catarella and the rest of the supporting cast doing their regular thing as Montalbano goes on his merry way.

Given the other female involvement there’s not much Livia this time around, but pathologist Dr Pasquano makes his appearance in the usual manner, Commissioner Bonetti-Alderighi is his usual pain in the backside self, though Salvo has managed to find ways of returning the anguish his boss delivers (there’s a wonderful little interview where Bonetti-Aldigheri is driven to the verge of insanity by Montalbano the walking Thesaurus).

Dr Lattes’ regular inquiries as to the welfare of Montalbano’s non-existent family produce the news that a little boy, grievously ill in one conversation has passed on in the next and in turn provides the means to avoid signing a mountain of paperwork recreated to replace what had been water-damaged when the roof of Montalbano’s office sprang a leak during the thunderstorm.

It may be titled The Age of Doubt, but there’s no question that Camilleri has, once again delivered a highly enjoyable and well paced mystery with all the elements long-time fans have come to know and love.

The English translation of next title in the series, La danza del gabbiano (The Dance of the Seagull) is due in February 2013.

Donna Leon "Death at La Fenice"

The fact that I’ve enjoyed whatever Donna Leon title I’ve picked up probably means she was a prime contender for reread the series from the start status, but if I hadn’t chanced upon Death at La Fenice in the el cheapo bins at Townsville’s Target that prospect would probably be something for the distant future.

As it turns out, now that I’ve got, and have read, the first title, there have been orders for the next couple (currently substantially discounted to the point where there’s not that much difference between tracking them down at Fishpond and scouring the el cheapo bins for the little devils.

So, One down, Two and Three ordered, a couple more on the shelves, two already reviewed on the website, what’s the G.O. here?

Well, for a start, it has been a long time since I found a first title in a seres that’s as fully formed as Death at La Fenice. Usually you start reading a series and things gradually fall in place as the author comes to terms with the key characters and the setting, but here, most of the elements that run through the series are firmly in place.

Admittedly, some of the characters who become key players in later titles have yet to make an appearance, the key one being Signora Elettra, computer wizard and secretary of Commissario Brunetti’s boss, who wouldn’t have been able to work her magic when Death was written because 1992 (the year the book was published) was comfortably before the development of the World Wide Web she trawls so efficiently.

But, effectively, from the get go we’ve got Guido Brunetti, devoted family man whose in-laws come from one of Venice’s foremost aristocratic families. He’s not exactly thrilled about this. Despite the fact he’s been married for seventeen years he isn’t sure of how to address the father-in-law and isn’t comfortable in their presence.

His wife and children are, from the start, much the way they continue to be through twenty years and twenty-one titles.

Paola Brunetti, University lecturer in English literature, has most of the mannerisms that continue through the series in place from the start, though her reputation in the kitchen is still to come to the fore and the two teenage kids age a little over the series, but it’s not as if Brunetti’s about to become a grandfather any time soon.

Another key piece who falls into place almost fully formed is Brunetti’s superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppi Patta, the vain and almost insufferably pretentious man who’s not very bright. While he’ll suck up to the rich and influential he doesn’t seem to have bothered to dig around enough to learn Brunetti’s father-in-law has two doges on his mother’s side of the family or maybe he’s too busy associating himself with politicians and the like to be admitted to the patrician circles where the really influential Venetians are found.

In any case, news that world famous conductor Helmut Wellauer has been found dead at the end of the intermission between Acts Two and Three of Verdi’s La Traviata in La Fenice Opera House is certain to be greeted with alarm among Patta’s superiors so he’ll inevitably be throwing his weight around in the quest for a quick solution to a death that casts the city in a very bad light, isn’t he?

Brunetti, on the other hand, goes about his business systematically, using clever mental stratagems to avoid excessive angst prompted by Patta’s posturing and tackling the suspects diplomatically as he comes to realise that the key to the mystery lies somewhere in Wellauer’s personality and quite possibly in the long distant past.

From the moment the body is discovered there’s no doubt about how he died. There’s a smell of bitter almonds in the dressing room, to the extent that the doctor who’s called to the scene and Brunetti both know there was cyanide in the maestro’s coffee even though they’ve only read about that sort of thing in detective stories.

Backstage at the opera house isn’t what you might call the most security-conscious of environments (it’s supposed to be, but from remarks made by musicians, singers and stage hands during the investigation you know it isn’t) and there are a number of people nearby who could have delivered the deadly dose of caffeinated cyanide.

For a start, Wellauer was a noted homophobe, director Franco Santore is gay, and Wellauer has refused to honour an agreement to cast Santore's protege is a role that would possibly make his name.

There’s also the question of leading soprano Flavia Petrelli, whose lesbian liaison with independently wealthy American archeologist, Brett Lynch, Wellauer was reputedly threatening to expose, an act that would see the singer’s Spanish ex-husband gain custody of their two children.

There’s a much younger, suddenly wealthy widow, who would naturally attract suspicion, and allegations of pro-Nazi sympathies in Wellauer’s past, which may have something to do with things but it’s not a case where forensic evidence is going to throw any light on the matter.

The only fingerprints on Wellauer’s coffee cup are the maestro’s own, and given the number people who would have used the dressing room there’s not going to be much joy there so, in the end, the only way through to a solution is to piece things together from gossip, chance remarks and a bit of historical research.

The search for scuttlebutt takes Brunetti from the lofty heights of a party at Count and Countess Falier’s (his in-laws) palazzo through assorted dressing rooms, back stage areas, hotel rooms and apartments to the wretched circumstances of a destitute soprano living on the island of Guidecca, and along the way Brunetti uncovers lurid tales from Wellauer’s past and unearths fascinating stories about many of the suspects.

Suspicions start to become obvious from fairly early on in the piece. Wellauer’s second wife committed suicide when their daughter was twelve, and the current wife’s early teenage daughter from a previous marriage is away at boarding school, which strikes Brunetti as extremely suspicious when he notes the total absence of anything you’d associate with a teenage girl in the conductor’s Venice apartment.

After all, even if she was only on the premises intermittently, Brunetti is all too aware of the teenage female’s ability to leave things behind. He’s got one at home, hasn’t he?

While the reader is pretty sure which way things are heading, there’s a neat twist at the end that leaves Brunetti with a difficult moral issue a the end. While he knows what happened it’s not the sort of case where you’d want to be revealing too much of what went on behind the scenes of the victim’s life.

And that, I think, is what makes this first title in an extensive series so remarkable. Donna Leon has managed to deliver what was originally a one-off joke prompted by a friend’s suggestion that she try writing a crime novel and put in place elements that are good enough to keep her, and the reader, going through twenty titles without adding too much to the original mix.

Of course, when you’ve got a setting like Venice, an eye for detail, and an intimate knowledge of sensibilities in La Serenissima, you’ve probably got a walk up start, but Brunetti’s an engaging character, the interactions with his family down to the surreptitious support for an anti-capitalist son who gloats over winning at Monopoly work, and his dealings with his loathsome boss reflect a degree of pragmatism in a character who’d be, one suspects, an idealist by inclination.

Alafair Burke "Long Gone"

After half a dozen titles in the crime fiction police procedural side of things Alafair Burke’s seventh novel shifts to the other side of the investigatory fence. Portland, Oregon prosecutor Samantha Kincaid and NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher are handed cases and given the task of figuring out who was responsible for the killing but in Long Gone art gallery manager Alice Humphrey is presented with a corpse and an empty gallery and has to prove she wasn’t responsible.

That’s hardly an unusual basis for a pot line when you’re talking thrillers. There are plenty of similar efforts involving an honest, Officer, it wasn’t me narrative, and the key ingredient, as far as I can see, is to make the suspect’s situation and protestations of innocence believable while keeping the reader turning the pages to find out which of the seemingly innocent characters surrounding the protagonist was the one whodunnit.

That, in turn, requires a believable and slowly unfolding back story, and Alafair Burke seems to have that department pretty well nailed.

Alice Humphreys is the daughter of acclaimed movie director Frank Humphreys and Oscar nominated actress Rose Sampson, was a child actress and now wants to make her way on her own merits rather than sponging on the parental prominence. Having been laid off by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she’s desperate for work when an offer to manage a new art gallery in the trendy Meatpacking District lands at her feet.

Now, you might think these things are too good to be true, and if that’s the way it looks it probably is, but Burke neatly works her way around that point, making Alice the sort of person who stumbles across things rather than going out actively looking. She landed her Manhattan apartment, for example, from an overheard conversation. Some readers might find this side of things far fetched, but given her background you might anticipate that things tend to fall into place rather often.

That child actress gig more than likely came about because one of her parents’ Hollywood peers suddenly ‘realised’ Alice was just perfect for this part they were having the devil of a time filling.  Nothing to do with an ambitious stage mother. Of course not...

So Alice is at an art show when Drew Campbell, snappily dressed corporate wheeler dealer offers her a gig managing a new gallery that’s going to start by displaying the work of the not excessively talented lover of the eccentric and predictably well-heeledand anonymous owner.

Once that show’s out of the way Alice is free to go her own way and set about making a name for herself as a savvy gallery operator without exploiting the family connections. Fair enough?

Well, it would be, if the exhibition didn’t turn out to comprise nude photos of questionable artistic value that attract the attention of a fundamentalist pastor who pickets the building, raises suspicions about the age of the subjects portrayed and the question of possible child pornography. Things are getting rather desperate when Alice contacts Campbell, needing to get in contact with the mysterious owner and arranges to meet Campbell at the gallery the following morning to sort things out.

She duly arrives to find the place stripped bare, Campbell dead on the floor, and a string of circumstantial evidence that makes her the prime suspect for his murder.

By this point Burke has already thrown in another two intersecting plot lines involving the disappearance of New Jersey teenager Becca Stevenson who has, it turns out, been keeping secrets from her (single) mother and FBI agent Hank Beckman, who’s obsessively stalking the man he believes to be responsible for his sister's death.

These other two plot lines are, of course, connected to Alice’s story in some way, and it’s the finding out how that keeps the reader turning the pages.

The first question, as far as Alice’s innocence is concerned, comes down to finding out who this Drew Campbell really was since there’s nothing concrete to tie the corpse to the assumed identity. The mobile phone number Alice has been calling links to a disposable phone, the artist whose work she displayed doesn't seem to exist and there’s no way of tracking down the anonymous benefactor who’s been financing the gallery.

And, predictably, the missing teenager’s fingerprints turn up on the premises at the gallery.

As far as the NYPD are concerned, there’s no question about who’s guilty, and as the rest of the story unfolds Alice unravels the details, uncovering carefully staged deceptions, discovering secrets her family would rather forget and learning that those around her aren’t necessarily quite who they appear to be.

Those issues result is an interesting, lively-paced read with some contemporary issues (social media playing a significant part in the plot line) getting an airing. I think I’ve read all of Ms Burke’s previous efforts (even if they’re not reviewed hereabouts) and Long Gone is right up there with the rest of them, to the point where I’ll have the eyes peeled for the return of Ellie Hatcher in the forthcoming Never Tell (due out in August).

Stuart MacBride "Blind Eye"

When The Actor turned up on the doorstep with a previously unread Logan McRae title from Stuart MacBride I was left scratching the noggin with vague memories of familiarity, and a few pages in I realised this was, in fact, one that had got away from the review process, presumably read in Southport and filed away as a subject for a Library Fiction entry that subsequently failed to materialise.

The main plot line has Aberdeen's Polish community under attack from a serial offender who leaves mutilated victims on building sites with their eyes gouged out and the eye sockets burned. Given the fact that these discoveries are regularly followed by threatening letters with an abundance of exclamation marks it seems safe to assume we’re looking at a psychopath with deep anti-Polish sensibilities, but there is, as usual, more to the case than meets the eye.

Given the gruesome descriptions of the victims in an investigation that, predictably, has been codenamed Operation Oedipus, you’d hardly be expecting a story that’s partly driven by humour, but that lack of expectation would stem from a lack of awareness of Logan McRae’s increasingly out there boss, DI Steele, who mightn’t quite steal the show but gets within a short half head of doing so. With adoption having been ruled out of contention Steele and her partner’s desire for a child has seen them turn to IVF, and when that idea’s torpedoed it’s a matter of doing it yourself with a suitable sperm donation.

Attempts to coerce McRae into the donor’s role (particularly after he’s been caught in flagrante with the Identification Bureau’s only tattooed Goth) contribute to the show stealing, as do Steele’s regular interactions with her colleagues, but the main focus of the story starts to come into question when Simon McLeod, owner of the Turf n' Track bookmaker’s operation, rather than another Pole becomes the latest blinding victim.

A reluctance to talk is would be understandable where the Poles were concerned, but McLeod isn’t talking either, not even when his business is firebombed and we’re seemingly looking at a takeover of Aberdeen’s underworld as foreign powerbrokers start to impinge rather seriously on the turf of Aberdeen's prime and most vicious crime lord.

With plenty of action, an intriguing story line, an aside trip to Poland where things definitely aren’t the way they seem on the surface, the regulation group dynamics as McRae angles for a vacant DI’s position and Steele and the pointedly prickly DCI Finnie go about their business without too much regard for the niceties of polite interaction and an underlying sense of humour that leavens the mix rather well Blind Eye was another cracking read in a highly enjoyable series.

So how the hell did I manage to miss reviewing it first time around?

Ian Rankin "The Impossible Dead"

It takes a special kind of cop to work effectively in Internal Affairs, the Office of Complaints and Conduct, Professional Ethics and Standards, Standards and Values or whatever label the authorities in your part of the world have tagged the internal investigators Ian Rankin calls The Complaints.

For a start, every case, regardless of how humble it may look on the surface, has the potential to reach upwards into the highest echelons of the force in question.

At the start of The Impossible Dead Edinburgh-based Inspector Malcolm Fox and his colleagues Sergeant Tony Kaye and Constable Joe Naysmith arrive in Fife to interview three police officers after suggestions Detective Paul Carter, who has been found guilty of extorting sex from women he's arrested and is awaiting sentencing, has been protected by his colleagues in the small coastal town of Kirkcaldy,

It’s the sort of allegation that’s going to be fairly inevitable in such cases, and it’s equally inevitable that the crooked cop’s colleagues are going to resent the investigation, so, predictably, Fox and his team run into the usual hostility and lack of co-operation from the local Constabulary. Par for the course (and, while we’re referencing golf, they’re not far from St Andrews).  As Fox and company arrive in Kirkcaldy, they are stonewalled by Kirkcaldy's entire detective force. The three men they have come to interview, DI Scholes, DS Haldane, and DS Michaelson, are on duty or unavailable due to illness.

In a way, you get the feeling all this becomes a bit of a game.

When the Complaints arrive, they're going to walk in expecting the antagonism from their fellow officers. Scholes, Haldane, and Michaelson are close friends of Carter’s and have more than likely covered up for him in the line of duty. When they arrive the Desk Sergeant may not be able to let them in, there may be no rooms available to work from, whatever facilities they are offered will be substandard, insecure or inconveniently located,whoever’s in charge will be away from the office attending meetings and the interviews they want to arrange will run up against all sorts of obstacles.

Faced with the predictable not quite passive resistance, Fox’s team set out to do their jobs. With Kaye and Naysmith assigned to chase up the interviews they’re supposed to be doing Fox heads off to talk to the person who reported Carter. The complainant, as it turns out was Carter’s uncle Alan, a retired police officer who now operates a security business and lives in isolated Gallowhill Cottage with his aged border collie, Jimmy Nicholl.

Fox’s team also talk to Teresa Collins, the woman who originally testified against Paul Carter, but news Carter has been released on bail causes Collins to cut her wrists. Then Alan Carter is found dead at his kitchen table, surrounded by papers relating to a cold case from 1985 with a pistol that had theoretically been destroyed by the police beside him. It looks like suicide until Fox points out a few inconvenient details.

Sure, it might be suicide, but the gun is in the wrong hand, and a dog lover would have arranged something for an aged and infirm border collie, wouldn’t he?

Given the fact that Paul Carter is out on bail, has a fairly obvious motive, made the last phone call his uncle received before he died and was seen driving in the area he becomes the obvious suspect.

The crux of the matter turns out to be the cold case Alan Carter was investigating. A lawyer named Francis Vernal was killed in a suspicious car accident, his death wasn’t properly investigated, and his widow (whose health is failing) wants some questions answered before she dies. She has persuaded an old friend to hire Alan Carter to revisit the circumstances surrounding his death.

Vernal was involved with radical groups trying to achieve independence by a violent campaign of violence that included packages of anthrax in the mail, kidnappings, murders and violent marches. Predictably, their activities attracted the authorities’ attention with undercover agents assigned the task of infiltrating the movement. His death had been treated as an accident or suicide, but he was in the habit of carrying sums of money with him and there’s none in the wreckage when his body was discovered. Fox is convinced Vernal was murdered.

Twenty-five years later many of those nationalists have reached the upper echelons of the Scottish National Party as devolution brought the SNP to power in Edinburgh.

As Fox starts digging it seems that someone wants something covered up (predictable, the radicals would doubtless have skeletons they’d prefer to keep in the closet) and with a contemporary terrorist plot in the offing MI5 is also sniffing around.

Fox sets out to discover what became of the other members of the nationalist movement and as he does he also has to deal with his father’s bouts of dementia and his increasingly strained relationship with his sister.

Fox’s father, Mitch, is in a nursing home, Fox is paying the bills, and while he feels guilty about the arrangement the alternative would probably involve Mitch living with him which wouldn’t work either.  His sister Jude is constantly accusing him of not caring about their father and has given Mitch a box of family photographs to jog his fading memory. One of them includes Fox’s uncle, who was involved in the nationalist movement and died in a motorbike accident around the same time as the Vernal crash.

That, in a nutshell is the basic plot line and the major subplot. There are, of course, others. There’s Fox’s interaction with Evelyn Mills, a member of Fife’s Complaints and the only friendly face in Kirkcaldy. She’s a married woman with whom Fox once had a one-night stand when she was slightly drunk and might be open to a rematch.

And Paul Carter, out on bail and under suspicion after his uncle’s death, drowns in the local harbour. Suicide? Murder? Another victim of someone who wants to keep the secrets hidden in the past under wraps?

As all these matters intersect the result is an absorbing read that kept me turning the pages, confirming a suspicion here, adding another strand there and throwing in the odd red herring to keep things interesting. Highly recommended, and a worthy successor to The Complaints, with the prospect, now that the retirement age for Scottish police officers has been raised to sixty-five that we might yet see John Rebus, retired but apparently sifting over the details of old, cold cases, come across Malcolm Fox, whose professional duties, as we’ve seen here, are always likely to push him in the same direction.