Description:
In this C. D. Sloan Mystery by CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird, a body is found in the river--but the victim didn't drown.
When local fisherman Horace Boller decided to row his boat out on the tidal backwash of the river one morning, he couldn't have meant to land a catch like this. What he ended up with was a body floating on the river's surface. And judging by the state of the corpse, the death was not a recent one.
The strange thing is, the coroner report indicates that drowning was not the cause of death. It's up to the intrepid C. D. Sloan--and his markedly less intrepid assistant, Constable Crosby--to investigate.
Along the way, Calleshire's most successful pair of puzzle-solving policemen will contend with a handful of additional strange deaths, befuddling municipal building codes, an antiquarian with interesting views on local history, and a fisherman who has his own motivation for helping (or perhaps hindering) the investigation. Can C. D. Sloan get to the bottom of this waterlogged killing?
Brief description:
Catherine Aird (1930-2024) was the author of more than twenty books of detective mysteries and three collections of short stories, most of which feature Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan and Detective Constable W. E. Crosby. Aird held an honorary master's degree from the University of Kent and was appointed an MBE in 1998. In recognition of her significant contribution to crime writing she was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger in 2015.
Review Quotes:
"Slyly humorous mysteries featuring Sloan and Crosby...classic English police procedural."
-- "Kirkus Reviews, praise for the series"