An Accidental Death
By Peter Grainger
Union Square & Co., 315 pages , $18 paperback
But for the Grace
By Peter Grainger
Union Square & Co., 329 pages , $18 paperback
Kindle-averse fans of good detective fiction — this includes me — have reason to celebrate. British writer Peter Grainger’s Sergeant D.C. Smith, the thinking readers’ sleuth, is now available in real books. The kind with paper pages rather than pixels. And about time too. Good on Union Square & Co. in the U.S. and Hutchinson Heinemann in the UK for making this fine series of police procedurals, with its charming and amusing lead character, available to readers who prefer turning pages to swiping them.
That Grainger’s creations languished so long as e-books and audio books only is why Britain’s Financial Times called Smith “the greatest fictional sleuth you’ve probably never heard of.” And it’s further evidence that book publishers often don’t know what they’re looking for, even when they have it right in front of them.
Languished is probably too strong a word. Since 2013’s An Accidental Death, with little marketing beyond word-of-mouth, Grainger has managed to sell more than a million copies of his dozen novels featuring Smith and his police colleagues at the fictional Kings Lake in Norfolk. (I’ve read the first nine.) Many of these sales have been in the U.S. where Grainger — pen name of RobertPartridge — is known and appreciated within the detective fiction cognoscente.
And why not? His stories are both page-turning and thought provoking. His intricate, well-constructed, and suspenseful plots, moving at a reader-friendly pace, check the entertainment box. But at the end of the novels, readers have learned more than just who done it. Like the best of detective fiction, the Kings Lake crowd engages and criticizes, in a non-scolding way, the world they live in. The human condition is well and truly engaged by Smith and associates, who give readers the feel of real life. These stories are more than just procedurals.
The heart of this character-driven series is the slightly built, 50-ish, and cerebral Smith who is not only a more-than-able veteran detective, connecting investigative dots others can’t even see, but possesses a dry and sometimes slightly off-plumb humor. This leads to some delightful dialogue and laugh-out-loud moments.
I’m confident that if detective fiction readers ever decide to create their own Mt. Rushmore, the likeness of David Conrad Smith would be prominent among the honorees.
Smith often deploys his humor along with a talent for insubordination without seeming to be insubordinate. This leaves his bureaucratic superiors — the kind more interested in budgets, targets, public relations, and promotion politics than in getting villains off the street — in doubt about whether they’ve been disrespected or not. His verbal fencing with Detective Superintendant Allen — fun for Smith but misery forAllen — provides case book examples of how to sass, confuse, or ignore your boss and get away with it. A pleasure to read, especially for those who’ve had to work in bureaucracies where the cream seldom rises to the top.
I’ll just mention the first two books that become available this month. The saga begins with An Accidental Death, where a 17-year old high school student drowns in a Norfolk River after a day of drinking and smoking weed with his pals. The matter, which most are prepared to write off as an accident, is passed on to Smith who’s expected to do the required paperwork on an unattended death and close the case. But bruises on the young man’s body and conflicting witness statements lead Smith to believe that the death was intentional. Smith then learns of a mystery canoeist who was paddling near where the dearly departed met his end. Then there’s that empty package of Bosnian cigarettes near the scene of the death. These things are too suspicious to ignore. So, as a well known detective of the past might have phrased it, “The Game’s afoot.”
In the face of indifference, resistance, and interference from above, Smith pursues the case with the help of rookie detective Chris Waters, whom Smith has been assigned to train and mentor. As the layers of circumstances around what appeared at first a lamentable but unremarkable accident unravel, it becomes clear this is a murder with a real history behind it. International players appear, and along with them danger to both Smith and his young assistant. They can’t look for help from the upper police food chain as the detectives’ approach to the case has been distinctly not by the book. They only have their wits to protect them from a bunch of bad actors who are pre-Miranda in their approach to anyone who gets crosswise to their purposes.
By the time this case is done and dusted, the bad guys and the innocent bystanders sorted, readers will have been introduced to a cast of characters who will recur and evolve throughout the series, not least young Waters, who series regulars will see mature as a man and as a detective with considerable help from Smith. This cast of engaging characters and their challenges, triumphs, disappointments, and life-changing events are the reason I recommend reading the Kings Lake series in order from the beginning. Each book covers an individual case and can be read and enjoyed as a stand-alone. But more pleasure comes from seeing how the team and the central character develop. Previous cases are sometimes mentioned in later novels, which would be confusing for readers who start the series in medias res. The stories are a series, but also a serial.
Smith and Waters team up again in But for the Grace, one of my favorites in the series. In this one they not only have to sift suspects and competing agendas but also to confront one of the foremost moral questions of the day concerning the end of life. They find themselves asking if it’s possible to have a crime without a criminal.
This case centers on Rosemary House, an upscale care home for elderly residents who, for various reasons, can no longer live in their former residences. The affluent residents, many of whom have led eventful and accomplished lives, jokingly refer to the home as a “departure lounge.” There have been a number of departures lately, but Kings Lake police are mobilized when 78-year-old Joan Riley dies from a highly unusual cause: a heroin overdose.
Smith and Waters descend on Rosemary House, being courteous when they can and pushy when they have to be, in order to determine who supplied a little old lady with enough heroin to do her in. Suspects — to include Rosemary staff, other residents, and residents’relations — are questioned, investigated, eliminated, until only one remains. And what to do with the one?
But for the Grace doesn’t have a conventional ending for a murder mystery, but one most readers will find satisfying. Along the way Grainger paints a sensitive picture of the indignities and charms of the golden years, particularly of those whose bodies have betrayed them while their minds remain clear.
Romance isn’t central to the stories, but it’s not ignored either. Along the way Waters has his innings in this department. And in But for the Grace, there’s a suggestion that even widower Smith, whose very successful marriage was ended by his wife’s cancer, might find romance again.
As a bonus for TAS readers, Smith is one of ours. The novels aren’t political and the characters never discuss politics. But Smith reads The Daily Telegraph rather than The Guardian. There’s the occasional acerbic remark about lenient judges and other hints that Smith is of a conservative frame of mind. He certainly takes a traditional approach to policing as well as in other areas of his life.
I strongly recommend this series for fans of detective fiction, and even for those who don’t normally read crime fiction. Grainger’s stories do what the best of literature has always done, explore the mysteries and varieties of life and what it means to be a human being. He does this around a central character who is not only funny and uber competent, but can be described as a true gentleman, in the old and honored sense of that word. It would be hard to find a better use of reading time.
I’m confident that if detective fiction readers ever decide to create their own Mt. Rushmore, the likeness of David Conrad Smith would be prominent among the honorees.
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