Chris Kelsey

This is a police procedural set in the 70s in small town Oklahoma, where a murder has occurred. It is not the first, and we soon learn that they may be connected. The story is told in the first person, with our narrator being a police chief who has fallen off the wagon. The story is a little slow to start, but easy enough to get through. However, I didn’t love it & will not bother reading others by this author. The book can be read as a standalone, as I had not read the others in the series and didn’t feel that I was missing any background.
Thank you to the author and publisher for a free copy of this book; this is my honest review.… (mais)

The setting didn't particularly appeal to me, but once I'd got used to it, the story itself maintained my interest well enough. THis is apparently the third in the series, and while there was some recap of, I presume, the previous book, it mostly seemed to stand on it's own well enough.

The setting is the 60s with event reaching back to even earlier. Emmett Hardy was chief of police for a small town in southern USA. Sometime previously (presumably in the last book) he'd upset a local dignitary who'd been trying to expand his gas works. As a result Emmett had taken to drink, and dried out again in hospital. He's just been released and is waiting for the town council to re-instate him, and while he's wondering how to fill his town he stumbles across an old case to investigate as a diversion. One of the last black families in the town back in the 30s had their house burnt down, and it was always assumed they'd left, but Emmett comes across news that maybe they'd been killed and the bodies hidden. He doesn't have the resources to dredge the local lake suspected of being the hiding place, and instead tries to talk to all those who might have remembered. But stirring up old troubles has it's own 'modern' consequences.

Even by the end of this I wasn't sure why the setting of the 60s was necessary, I guess it's just a period the author knows/likes, but it s a very long time ago now, and is hard to relate to, although it does mean I didn't notice if there were any historical inaccuracies. Emmett himself was fun, and didn't seem to be too much of the stereotypical 'recovering alcoholic cop' having a good relationship with his girlfriend and work colleagues. There weren't any disconcerting jumps to other characters, and most of the bit-players held their own well enough.

I'm not sufficiently curious to go back and read the beginning of the series, or indeed any later ones if there are any, but it was passable entertainment for a while, and a different voice to more modern crime dramas.… (mais)