City of Dreadful Night

October 4, 2010
In a botched effort to arrest a violent armed robber, police officers under the command of Chief Constable Robert Watts raid the wrong house and gun down four people at the outset of the strong first in British author Guttridge's Brighton trilogy. Watts publicly defends his officers, but pressure escalates for him to step down. His troubled marriage collapses after the press learns that he had an affair with Det. Sgt. Sarah Gilchrist, one of the members of the assault team. When long-lost papers surface relating to an unsolved 1934 case in which a woman's body parts were found in luggage left at railway stations, Watts ends up assisting a reporter who reopens the case. Despite a major coincidence that connects the two plot lines, Guttridge (Two to Tango) successfully pulls readers in, and many will be eager to pick up the dangling plot threads in the second book.

October 1, 2010

A 2009 massacre in Brighton, England, may be linked to the notorious trunk murder of 1934.

Chief Constable Robert Watts is pushed to resign after a police raid goes bad and four people are killed, causing riots, early retirements and still more murders. But only after a story is leaked revealing a one-night stand with DS Sarah Gilchrist that destroys his fragile marriage does he agree to resign. Watts refuses to let go of the case. With the help of Tingley, an old army buddy and security expert with ties to the government, he starts looking into the cover-up. Sarah was on the raid and knows there was something wrong but can't get anyone except Watts to listen. In the meantime, reporter Kate Simpson has been given documents relating to a case in 1934, when a woman's body was discovered cut up in pieces left in several trunks. The victim's head was never found, her body never identified. A fragmented diary written by a police officer proves fascinating reading for Kate, whose powerful father William may have been behind Watts's downfall. Watts finds himself questioning his own father, a lifelong womanizer who along with William's father was on the Brighton police force in 1934. Powerful enemies and missing information may make both cases impossible to untangle.

Be prepared for a long night. Guttridge (Cast Adrift, 2005, etc.) combines period mystery, police procedure and noir in a fascinating tale whose only blemish is that you'll have to wait for the next in the series for its resolution.

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November 1, 2010

The night four people are killed by armed police officers marks the end of Bob Watts's career as chief constable in Brighton and the beginning of a two-prong investigation involving the current crime and a cold case from 1934 of a headless corpse with possible ties to the present. Watts, joined by Detective Superintendent Gillespie (with whom he had a one-night stand), radio reporter Kate Simpson, and Tingley, his MI5 friend, soon finds that corruption is only the beginning of this investigation. VERDICT Complex plotting and an unusual connection made between two very different cases make this first entry in a new trilogy an absorbing read. The cliff-hanger ending will whet the reader's appetite for more. For fans of British procedurals. The British author of the Nick Madrid series (Two to Tango) is also the Observer's crime fiction critic.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2010
An armed house arrest in Brighton goes horribly wrong, and Chief Constable Robert Watts career is on the line. Four people were killed in the operation (including a pregnant woman), and the operational commander committed suicide soon after. Watts is told to resign by his old friend, government fixer William Simpson. And when word leaks about Watts previous one-night stand with DC Sarah Gilchrist, who was in on the bungled arrest, both his job and his marriage are in tatters. As he enlists the help of security advisor James Tingley to get revenge for what he thinks was a setup, Watts also looks into a bizarre, unsolved murder case from 1934, investigated at the time by both his father and Simpsons. This first of the projected Brighton trilogy leaves most of the answers about murders past and present decidedly up in the air. However, Guttridge has created a fine cast of fallible characters, and readers who can handle ambiguityand are willing to wait for resolution through two more booksare likely to be amply rewarded.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)