Black Water by
T.Jefferson Parker
hbk out January 03
Published by HarperCollins
at £10.99
A well-written American police procedural novel by a writer with a string of
previous novels. It is written to a formula that seems to be emerging in US
crime-writing, which must owe something to the fashion set by Ms
Cornwell. I have now read a string of books in which the lead figure is a
female law enforcement officer of some type, usually widowed or divorced,
usually with a child and some professional disaster in the recent past.
In this one, which is obviously a sequel to one I have not read, concerns
Detective Merci Rayborn of the Sheriff's Office of Orange County, South
California. Archie Windcraft, a Deputy in the Office – which is roughly
equivalent to a police-constable elsewhere – is found outside his too-
expensive house with a severe gun-shot wound to the head, but in the
bathroom, his beautiful wife Gwen lies dead with two bullet wounds. The
shots came from his gun, on which were his fingerprints and her blood was
on his dressing-gown. The DA not unnaturally wants to charge him, but
Merci champions his innocence. Here there is a problem for the reader, as
this is linked to the bad event in her life a year before, which is repeatedly
alluded to, but never fully explained; by inference, some other Deputy ended up
dead and there were scandals all around.
The wounded man lies in coma for some days, then recovers in a strange
mental and neurological state, before absconding. The book contains a mass
of medical facts about his condition, clearly energetically researched by the
author. A good read, but one gets a bit weary of the deluge of books in the
American format bestriding the literary world, just as that country bestrides
the wider world.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
