Tomorrow (Monday) CSI trainee Kristy Mockett is set to begin
her first day on the job. She’s just finished her training and is eager to get
to work for the Surrey Police. Today (Sunday) she goes out for a jog in the
crisp winter morning air. Light snowfall last night.
She is dang near run over by a cyclist but continues on. Near
the end of her path through the park she comes across an older Indian woman who
has been assaulted and fatally beaten. Her initial shock is pushed deep as her
training kicks in. She calls it in and sets out to isolate and preserve the
crime scene.
DCI Craig Gillard gets the case. After studying the crime
scene, he has to make the family notification. Turns out, the victim, Tanvi
Roy, was the matriarch of a highly successful business that imported Indian
spices and foods to her UK-based grocery stores. Even expanded into TV cooking
shows. Yeah, the Roy family is doing pretty dang good.
As in most murder investigations, DCI Gillard starts with the
family as well as anyone that would stand to gain from Mrs. Roy’s death. In
this case, he didn’t have to look much past the toxic interrelationships within
the family. Most everyone has a reason to see her dead. Some financial, some
personal, some cultural.
This isn’t an action-based novel by any stretch. A little Agatha Christie-ish? Maybe. Having just seen the 2019 movie Knives Out, the similarities are apparent (death of the family scion to a very troubled family). Anyway, it’s
probably a more realistic example of a police procedural than all those car chase-shoot-em-ups
so common these days. Louth’s DCI Gillard is a believable and sympathetic
detective who deals with suspects, colleagues, and his bosses much the way you
might expect you would, if you were in Gillard’s shoes. This is the 4th
DCI Gillard story by Louth (they are all titled as "The Body In The . . . ") and I suspect the series would be easily entered and
completed in short order.
ECD
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