The Trawlerman - William Shaw

 

I will admit to being a recent convert to William Shaw’s books. My first was a Breen and Tozer story and on the strength of that the lovely Ana McLaughlin at riverrun books gifted me a copy of not just The TrawlerMan but Grave’s End too! I’ve just finished the former and subsequently ordered the rest of the Alexandra Cupidi series.

So, when there are so many good crime writers out there what is it about this author that has had me impatiently adding to my overloaded TBR shelves? Sit back, settle down and I’ll tell you.

A sense of place for one. The depiction of London in the sixties in A Song From Dead Lips was palpable and I’m old enough to remember it! The bleak, the unique properties of Dungeness sent me hurtling back to my childhood for I will never forget driving across the shingle, seeing those incredible huts and houses and the feeling that I’d entered another civilisation and wishing I could live there. I remain fascinated by the place so to see it as a location for The Trawlerman was exciting and urged me to read on from the opening pages. Mentions of Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch, all places from childhood, simply evoked, not just a flood of memories but emotion too.

Complex, yet plausible plotting with a satisfying attention to detail. Pieces of a jigsaw; where you manage to get all the edge bits first and then start working on the inner part of the puzzle searching for those elusive pieces so it all makes sense. Clever, precise. As a reader you admire the connections. It isn’t necessarily a book of twists and turns, it’s far more a cerebral, rational and logical dissection of a chain of interlinked events.

Character driven; the heart of this book is Alex. One of the reasons I’m so anxious to read the previous books is to find out what exactly she’s been through to render her in the extreme state of stress she suffers in The Trawlerman. Flawed yet human. But she’s so bright and perceptive, an intuitive police officer, vocational, weighing up the right and wrongs. Using that sixth sense to try and put her finger on what isn’t quite right about a person or a situation. As a reader you start to trust her instincts rather than trust your own.

An easy to read narrative. That always seems like a paradox to me when you’re grappling with a complex plot. But I read this book in one day. That’s partly because it belongs to that exciting genre of fiction that I call ‘The UnPutDownAbles’ and also because the writing is so crisp and assured. It flows along like a fast flowing river carrying the reader with it.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have another William Shaw book I want to read before the others arrive through my letterbox.