Lethal Waves

April 10, 2017
In Rowson’s complex 13th mystery featuring empathetic, melancholy Det. Insp. Andy Horton (after 2016’s Fatal Catch), the Portsmouth CID officer visits Guernsey, the home of a relative of his mother, who disappeared when he was 10. (His search for clues to his identity is a theme that runs throughout this series.) While on the island, Horton is called in to assist a police colleague who’s conducting the enquiry into the death of an unidentified woman on a Portsmouth-to-Guernsey ferry boat. A preliminary examination seems to point to suicide, but the dead woman’s lack of identification and the absence of personal information in her cellphone cast doubt on that theory. Horton returns to Portsmouth, where he’s immediately drawn into the shooting death of a man dressed as a tramp. However, the victim’s manicured hands indicate that he might have been in disguise. Yes, nothing in this police procedural is as it at first appears. The Harley Davidson–riding, houseboat-dwelling Horton is a fascinating man to get to know, and his thoughtful approach to detection is a pleasure to read.

April 1, 2017
DI Andy Horton (Fatal Catch, 2015, etc.) faces two seaside murders with few leads.A trip to Guernsey advances Andy's search into his mother's long-ago disappearance very little. But his visit with Violet Ducale at her exclusive and expensive nursing home does provide him some of the details of his foster parents' life after his departure at adulthood and leads him to suspect it may have been no accident that he was placed with Bernard and Eileen Litchfield after his mother suddenly dropped off the map. Before he can explore these tantalizing morsels, Horton's pulled into a case by his old friend Inspector John Guilbert of the Guernsey Police. The body of Evelyn Lyster, a well-to-do traveler with a Portsmouth address, is found aboard the Guernsey ferry. Horton offers to follow up at the Portsmouth end, but when he arrives home, he's confronted with a second corpse, this time unidentified. DCS Uckfield, suffering a miserable head cold, wants Andy on this case as well. Although both investigations yield plenty of physical evidence, nobody can find any hint of a motive, even after the second corpse is identified as Peter Freedman, a former vagrant who's now made a fortune teaching self-help courses. Why would anyone want to do away with these two solid, upper-middle-class citizens? That's what Andy needs to know to help his congested boss clear these cases. Finally balancing his obsession with the past and his current workload, Horton manages to mount a decent investigation and produce a sound, if somewhat unlikely, conclusion.

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May 1, 2017
British copper Andy Horton continues his quest to find out what happened to his mother, Jennifer, who disappeared when he was 10. The evidence he's gathered so far points to the possibility that she was involved in espionage and that her disappearance was not voluntary. For the moment, though, he puts his own investigation aside to do his job. A woman's body on the Isle of Wight ferry is followed by two more deaths that at first seem unrelated but eventually appear to be linked. But how? The story plods along at the startmuch like Andy's investigationwith lots of theorizing, questions with no answers, and a frustrating number of clues leading nowhere. Three-quarters of the way through the book, however, the action picks up dramatically, as Andy starts unraveling the horrifying links between the cases. This heartbreaking story of ambition, greed, jealousy, and revenge makes a good choice for fans of no-nonsense British procedurals.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)