Black Summer

This is the second crime novel featuring Detective Washington Poe and sidekick Matilda 'Tilly' Bradshaw.  It follows hot on the heels of last year’s debut The Puppet Show, which garnered an enthusiastic reception from readers.  Though a series read, it appears written as a stand-alone with an urgency to its narrative style.

A high stakes cat-and-mouse game ensues between DS Poe and a cunning psychopath named Jared Keaton, a man who was a restaurateur as well as minor celebrity from a TV culinary show. Years earlier, DS Poe arrested and incarcerated Keaton following the brutal murder of his daughter Elizabeth.  With Keaton serving a life sentence, it is perplexing when a distraught woman appears to the authorities claiming to be Elizabeth Keaton.

Poe has to return to Cumbria and the scene of the crime, and to his past to investigate.  Jared Keaton’s legal team are mounting an unsafe verdict against his prosecution and incarceration. The woman in question is indeed Elizabeth Keaton, according to her blood DNA samples.

Soon, Washington Poe is on the backfoot. Detective Superintendent Gamble, who was in charge at the time of Jared Keaton’s apprehension is now suspended, and his replacement is looking at Poe.  When the alleged Elizabeth Keaton, vanishes once more, Poe has his back to the wall but thankfully he has the resources and technical skills of the socially awkward analyst ‘Tilly’ Bradshaw at hand.

There are echoes of Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, in the pairing of Washington Poe and Matilda Bradshaw, though Craven’s style is his own. The narrative is slippery, with short chapters as Detective and Analyst work at the conundrum that is the Keaton family.

Though it’s vivid character delineation beyond the protagonist(s) and antagonist(s) that makes this serial-killer opus engage with the reader. The author deftly paints the secondary characters that pepper this chase against the clock, with narrative brushstrokes that make them come alive on the page, like pathologist Estelle Doyle, the Prisoner Richard Bloxwich or the policemen and women that appear and disappear during the narrative.

Mentioned should also be made of the terrain that appears, for the Cumbrian backdrop is indeed almost a character that Poe has to traverse, to uncover what went on at the prison, as well outside the penitentiary.

This sophomore work further builds upon Craven’s skills as a storyteller, one with a dark imagination and a sharp insight into the mind of a psychopath. Thankfully there is gentle humour to add light relief to the darkness, as there are some disturbing sequences that will haunt.

There is merit in Craven’s work of police investigations into dark minds, and even darker motives. Black Summer is a welcome addition into this sub-genre of psychological mind-games played-out between those who defend the law, and those who seek to harm others in gruesome ways.