Tony Black

This is a good Police procedural book.
Set in Edinburgh Detective Inspector Rob Brennan is on the hunt for a killer.
A young Woman's body turns up mutilated in a field on the outskirts of the city.
There are similarities to a case 5 years ago.
DI Brennan goes against his Superiors wishes and sanctions overtime and asks for some help from a neighbouring force.
His Boss is not pleased and seeks to undermine him. He gives him Inspector Gallagher who was on the original case to work with him.
Brennan doesnt trust Gallagher he is a bit sneaky.

Also at the same time a local low level Gangster called Henderson is getting out of jail he teams back up with Angela who he pimps out.
He owes money to higher up the food chain gangsters.
Angela got upset when she seen the news about the dead girl it brought sad memories back. She shows Henderson her diary. It turns out the
Murderer is her old PE teacher called Crawley.
Henderson sees money to be made he goes and sees Crawley beats him up withdraws cash from his bank.
Beats Angela up when he finds out Crawley came looking for her. He then kills Angela to frame Crawley.
Police arrest Henderson for murder, then they have to find Crawley they flush him out by using a Police woman as a decoy.
This works and eventually they catch the bad guy, Gallagher was covering up and helping Crawley as they were in a Childrens home and
they killed another boy together.

OK Good book this.… (mehr)

DI Valentine is recovering from a stabbing at Tulliallan police training centre working with new recruits when he is recalled to take charge of a brutal murder of a retired banker. Valentine is a hard character to like and the author seems to be trying to show off his wide-ranging vocabulary for no real advantage to the plot. Whilst I expect some Scottish dialect words and knew many from numerous Rankin and other Scots' writers, I found myself having to go the dictionary in search of other obscure words many more times than usual. I also found the underlying plot somewhat derivative and predictable.… (mehr)

Whenever you're confronted by a jointly authored novel it's very hard to dampen the temptation to constantly look for hints on who contributed what components. Which was the case for around the first 20 pages of BAY OF MARTYRS and then I totally forgot to look.

Set in the South East of Victoria around the town of Warrnambool in particular, this is a great novel featuring a cynical local newspaper reporter, a new in town photographer, a dodgy local developer and an even dodgier politician. Nothing particularly surprising in the later I hear you say, and it's a very sad indictment on current day politics that as soon as the pollie made an appearance I had him marked as "one of the baddies", but how or why or when everything connects up is really the point of BAY OF MARTRYS. So named, because in the opening scenes of the novel the body of a young woman is found washed up on the beach of the bay of that name, drowned in what the local police inspector and notorious tricky bastard, would very much like to write off as an accident.

Only Moloney smells a story here, as well as in the sudden government cash splurge on the local airport - all supposedly in the name of tourism and economic growth. Meanwhile back at the newspaper he works for everybody's under pressure, big city owners are putting the brakes on costs, and his editor in chief would like nothing better than to see the back of the difficult to deal with Moloney. Bec, new girl in town, Irish-born photographer and hide-out from a tricky past is thrust into the investigation as part of her working day with Moloney and because of her relationship with one of the local cops.

There are many elements to the plot of BAY OF MARTYRS that come right from the playbook of corrupt goings on. Whilst much of the underlying truth won't come as any surprise to most readers, it's delivered in an engaging, paced and believable manner, partially because of some great characterisations, but mostly because it is so believable. Clay Moloney is a great character, perfectly capable of shouldering the responsibility of being centre to the newspaper's ongoing fortunes, the investigation into the young woman's death and uncovering a bunch of questionable goings on in a small community which is part long-term locals, part blow-in recent arrivals. He's also dealing with the housing crisis bought on by influx of students to the town, and the problems that a somewhat rudder-less life up until now have left in its wake. Whilst there are romantic attachments for all parties in BAY OF MARTYRS they aren't over blown and they certainly don't run smoothly. There are more bodies, there is a build up of tension towards the end, and there is a hefty dose of journalist-jeopardy that's not that hard to swallow at all, even if the twist in the tail was a bit Hollywood cliffhanger.

Nicely done, BAY OF MARTYRS is a very entertaining outing in what seems likely to be an ongoing series from UK based author Tony Black and local Matt Neal.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-bay-martyrs-tony-black-matt-neal… (mehr)