READING IDEAS FOR THE WEEK 6/10

The Norwich Murders by John Reid, Vanguard Press; £11.99

On his return from a well-deserved week’s holiday, Detective Chief Inspector Steve Burt’s superior suggests that he applies for the position of head of CID in Norfolk.

As a chief superintendent, that would be a significant promotion, but would mean moving from the Met, with further consequences for his family life.

In the meantime, he takes over the case of a young woman whose headless body was found in the Thames – but with no ID and little in the way of forensic evidence, this looks like being hard to solve.

At the post-mortem, Steve discovers another young girl, with an identical tattoo, had been murdered a few months earlier.

Separately, we are introduced to the brothers Black, Andrew and David, notorious London gangsters who are on their way to Amsterdam to negotiate a business deal that will increase their involvement in, and financial return from, drugs and prostitution.

They meet with Jean Franco and Antonio Conti, the latter an ex-Mafia book-keeper, who are running a Europe-wide organisation and who want the Blacks to run the UK side of their business.

Back in London, Steve’s team is assigned another murder – this time of Detective Sergeant Elsie Brown from the Norfolk Constabulary.

Steve’s introduction to Norfolk is less than satisfying, and is further complicated by another murder – this time of ex-Detective Inspector Jack Ralph, also of the Norfolk Constabulary.

Each thread of what is now quite a complex plot develops, and gradually the threads are drawn together for a united finale.

This is the sixth novel in the DCI Burt series, written by Dundee-born John Reid.

It stands alone, with little reference to previous cases – and certainly none that would act as spoilers should one wish to go back and read them.

The plot is well conceived and the narrative moves between the subplots coherently.

I found some aspects of the writing itself a little annoying: Much of the plot and characterisation comes from other people’s recollections and musings; there is an obsessive emphasis on exact times throughout; the amount of tea and coffee consumed is amazing; but most of all (for me), the treatment of a number of relatively major characters is simplistic, and leaves them looking extremely naïve.

The ending seems a bit rushed and left a question mark over a major plot component – which may, of course, be resolved in a future book.