I've read all of Simon Mason's DI Ryan Wilkins' mysteries and I thoroughly enjoyed them. And whilst these novellas remain in the crime genre they are very different stories.
These stories are the first two in the Finder series which feature a character known as ....... The Finder. His specialises in finding missing persons. Cold cases. In the first the case of Alice is reopened when the body of a girl is found and the perpetrator is thought by the police to be guilty of Alice's disappearance too. I'll give nothing away! This might be classed as a novella but I found it packed as hefty a punch as a novel twice its length. It's meticulously plotted and our intrepid Finder is thorough to a fault. He interviews all and sundry with a tenacity that would put a terrier to shame. We learn a little of his back story too. The final denouement a delight.
The second book looks at the disappearance of Don Bayliss who has been missing for seven years, presumed dead. When his wife finds a business card amongst his possessions many years later the police interest is piqued, the case is reopened and the services of the Finder once more engaged. Whilst the story is very different from the first one the same doggedness and painstaking attention to detail is employed and once again the final conclusion is most congenial.
I love the DI Wilkins stories but I'd also greatly enjoy reading some more of these. There's some of the classic detective tradition in the narrative. I loved the way the author ran the Finder's investigations alongside a classic book - What Maisie Knew and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I think that contributed to the classic and almost traditional feel that the books had yet the actual writing felt very contemporary.
I think these stories cement Simon Mason's position as one of our most interesting and imaginative crime writers.
Thanks to riverrun books for my gifted copies.
No comments:
Post a Comment