Dead Ground by MW Craven

Description from Amazon:

Detective Sergeant Washington Poe is in court, fighting eviction from his beloved and isolated croft, when he is summoned to a backstreet brothel in Carlisle where a man has been beaten to death with a baseball bat. Poe is confused - he hunts serial killers and this appears to be a straightforward murder-by-pimp - but his attendance was requested personally, by the kind of people who prefer to remain in the shadows.

As Poe and the socially awkward programmer Tilly Bradshaw delve deeper into the case, they are faced with seemingly unanswerable questions: despite being heavily vetted for a high-profile job, why does nothing in the victim’s background check out? Why was a small ornament left at the murder scene - and why did someone on the investigation team steal it? And what is the connection to a flawlessly executed bank heist three years earlier, a heist where nothing was taken . . .

 

Initially I was taken aback as I had just finished The Impossible Fortune, where they were arguing over who the best James Bond was and this book opens with a bank robbery where they are using James Bond masks!

This wasn’t my favourite one in the series and I hate saying that because all the elements are there but it seems that some of the literary stretches we might accept are now being pushed even further and are a bit harder to fathom.

Poe is still fighting to keep his croft with Tilly representing him (can she do this?) when he is called out on a case he really has no business being at. Other people introduced to the investigation clash with Poe and the way he does things (surprise) but have an integral part in the outcome of the story.

When the victim is found to be involved in something that happened years ago in Afghanistan, where a team may have been part of something off the books, the evidence leads to an astonishing theft. Now, without giving spoilers, you find yourself at this point in the book going what? All of them? And how on earth was this navigated from the mental and physical position the person was in? I guess you will have to read it to find out what I mean!

What annoyed me was the book being over and then an extra bit coming in to explain even more about the theft that seemed an add on. And too many of our usual characters had such small roles to play in this book! And Tilly – since when has she learnt the art of subtle nuance and is able to use it in eyebrow-raising contexts? This was also, unfortunately, the worst one in the series where it comes to the reader not being able to figure out how or who but having to wait until the author decided to reveal it all.

I really hope that the next one in the series goes back to the formula that works for these characters and has us concentrating on the intricacies of the plot and not trying to figure out what is going on. I have another by him in a different series so let’s give Fearless a go and see what that is about so long.