2022 mystery, third in the loose Harbinder Kaur series.. At a 21-year
school reunion, one of the former pupils is found dead with cocaine
round his nose. And he's an MP…
This is definitely a loose series; since the last book,
Hardbiner's moved from Bruighton to become a DI with the Metropolitan
Police, and is in charge of this investigation. (There's some talk of
press attention, but someone else is doing a good job of keeping that
off the back of the working cops.) She's having to manage a team while
trying to keep up the practical police work herself; and one of that
team was at the reunion in her own right…
We get two other narrative voices too: Cassie, who has dim and
incomplete memories of being involved in the murder of one of her
fellow pupils back in 1999, and Anna, one of the other students who
doesn't remember anything about it at all. Cassie in particular has
knowledge which is not shared with the reader at first, something
which generally irks me in a mystery, but I've got used to Griffiths'
style by now and I grudgingly forgive her for it.
I'm also reminded of some of Christopher Brookmyre's later books, and
particularly the way in which the things people did at school seem to
set up the entire course of their later lives; this one was arty and
musical and is now a famous musician, that one had the lead in every
play and is how a famous actor, those two were always talking about
politics and are now MPs. This isn't my general experience; sure,
there were some people at school like that, but most of the people I
knew have gone in quite different directions from what the careers
staff would have advised, and most of them (including me) have
significantly different personalities—in other words, we've grown up a
bit.
This is definitely towards the literary end of my taste in mystery
fiction, and the case (cases?) almost become subordinated to feelings
about a dying mother or a rekindled romance. The puzzle is still
there, and everything gets appropriately resolved, even if I found a
particular feat of marksmanship (n qbjajneq fubg jvgu n cvfgby npebff
n fgerrg vagb n qnex ohg bcra fcnpr gb uvg bar bs gjb crbcyr jub ner
fgehttyvat jvgu rnpu bgure) just a bit impressive for the person who's
meant to have done it.
(Also it's Three Men In a Boat not "Three Men and a Boat".)
All right, the investigators were more surprised by the revelation of
the villain than I was, but I suppose that's fair enough.