Jon Morgan is a retired police Superintendent and francophile who, it is said, has consequently seen almost everything awful that people can do to each other. He relishes quality writing in all genres but advises particularly on police procedure for authors including John Harvey and Jon McGregor. Haunts bookshops both new and secondhand and stands with Erasmus: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I may buy food and clothes.”
Detective Inspector Gayther, not far off retirement age, diabetic and rather rumpled, returns to a Norfolk police station from compassionate leave after the death of his wife.
He has been assigned an unsolved LGBTQ+ cases including a series of murders he once worked on some 30 years before. Despite the real need to address the issues, which were once not taken seriously, deep down he feels that this is a plan to sideline him.
He is joined by a recently qualified Detective, Georgina Carrie, and two direct entry detectives, fast track and still learning the ropes. Between them they make a decent fist of a cold case re-investigation but break all the rules of such a role. Carrie is a single parent, living with her own mother and has a 2:2 in English literature – so get used to the occasional restoration-era literary quotes.
The murderer: ‘The Scribbler,’ named after his trademark mutilation of the bodies of his victims, has started-up again after an apparent long hiatus, which is nothing of the kind as he has simply been going further afield. A pre-Soham failure to link up cross-border, similar-fact cases is clearly still haunting policing.
After many false leads and a warning from Gayther's superiors to drop the case as his approach has been generating complaints, the Scribbler is unmasked together with his horribly tragic, religiously fundamentalist and abusive back-story. Larkin’s comment on parents is wholly apposite and in this case the parental abuse is intentional!
The cavalier approach to the investigation brings tragedy and further killings in its wake.
This is a thoroughly decent thriller with an interesting twist but is a little didactic on the LGBTQ+ front, but could have done with some judicious pruning.
