2021 contemporary thriller with fantastic elements. DC Constance
Fairchild was taking time off in rural Wales to recover, when the
plague happened and she decided to wait it out. But as usual, trouble
comes looking for her.
After a slight wobble in book 2, this series regains stability,
even if it sometimes feels as though it should have been written by
Harry Bingham, who's supposedly been working on the next Fiona
Griffiths book since 2017. (There's even a sequence in which Con has
to find her way through darkened caves, though it's not as
claustrophobic as the one Bingham wrote.)
Of course, Con gets into trouble, but her boss takes advantage of her
already being in Wales to plug her into a smuggling investigation
("The major ports are locked up pretty tight now, so the gangs have
switched to bits of the coast we can't watch so closely.") And she
runs into someone she feels an urge to help, perhaps because nobody
else has. She's away from her usual contacts for most of the book,
which is a shame, but some of the ongoing minor characters make
appearances, if little actual progress in their own stories.
Interestingly, about half-way through the book, Con's already found
out who the bad guys are, they know who she is, and they've tried to
kill her. In spite of all that, the level of tension falls back for a
bit; I'm not entirely convinced but I think it works, and I'm
interested to see Oswald taking chances with his writing rather than
getting into a rut.
I also liked the way that Con's boss has clearly worked out what sort
of person she has working for her, and tells her firmly not to get
involved in the big police operation, so she's only leaving this
confidential briefing so that Con knows which toes not to tread on –
with everything except a finger by the nose and a broad wink. Many
police series need tension between hero and boss; that's still here,
but it's not the tired old basic incompatibility that we've seen too
often.
I did enjoy this a great deal, but it's a substantial change from the
first two Con books (in which the main theme seemed to be dealing with
the rich and powerful whom the law wouldn't touch) to something with
both significantly more magic and targets who are less socially
powerful and more conventionally criminal. This is not a bad thing.
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