2013 police procedural mystery, more or less. After an unspecified
incident, Smith has refused to retire as everyone expected and has
instead taken a demotion to Detective Sergeant and a load of trivial
casework: community liaison, school lectures on how drugs are bad, and
signing off on an accidental drowning…
Only of course it's not that simple, and with the connivance of
his DI he manages to dig from slight oddity in the post mortem to a
complex web of old lies and chickens coming home to roost.
I call this "police procedural, more or less" because Smith spends
much of his time thinking about how he doesn't do things in the modern
police way, and his way is always better. Anyone who agrees with him
(including fellow police officers) is right, and a good person; anyone
who disagrees is wrong, and a bad 'un. It's all a bit Mary Sue at
times, and more specifically it doesn't have the cooperation among
members of the force that follows the pattern Ed McBain established
for procedurals—rather, they're acting because of personal loyalty or
antipathy to Smith.
That said, when Grainger can get away from how wonderful Smith is (and
how tragic—haunted by a case that went bad, dead wife, etc.) the
actual detection is pretty good, even when things drift outside the
strict bounds of legitimate police work. There's one big coincidence
(that Grainger goes out of his way to justify), but mostly it's
sensible correlation of very incomplete data.
Two oddities: the setting is the medium-sized town of "Kings Lake", in
Norfolk, and if you are at all familiar with the surroundings of
King's Lynn you may find yourself wondering as I did why Grainger
bothered to change the names (or, in turn, didn't change them rather
more). And, while Smith plays up his technological incompetence,
everyone refers to a particular mapping service as "Googlemaps".
I didn't love it, but I'll certainly read another.