Tony R Cox is an ex-provincial UK journalist. The Simon Jardine series is based on his memories of the early 70s - the time of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll - when reporters relied on word of mouth and there was no internet, no mobile phones, not even a fax machine.
A suspicious death at a livestock auction, a blackmail plot, and sheep rustling that may or may not be linked to one or both of them, and underlying the well-scripted storylines is an off-the-gritstone-wall potential love story. Date With Danger enthrals and immerses in equal measure.
There must have been a temptation for the author to let the rural beauty of the Yorkshire Dales dictate the pace of this novel: the rain on the fields falling in little streams down to the twists and turns of the rivers below, but Chapman ups the pace and hardens the narrative. From a gentle, scene-setting trot the various plots accelerate to a gallop and taper towards a powerful, intriguing finale. This is bluff Yorkshire; a land where you have to be tough to survive, and it’s best to know who you can and can’t trust. Twists and turns abound, and are handled with candour and realism.
The widely differing characters stand out, helped by their slight caricatures. They retain a sense of realism beneath the stereotypes. Anyone who has been to this wild and rustic part of England knows that ‘beauty’ can be rugged, harsh and wind and rain swept. It’s not a place to be alone with an unknown murderer on the loose.
If I have one minor criticism it is in the frequent cryptic references to previous investigations in the ’Death With’ series. Date With Danger stands proudly as a standalone crime fiction novel.
