Salt Lane

April 15, 2018

DS Alexandra Cupidi (introduced in The Birdwatcher) is complex, conflicted, and conscientious. After conducting an investigation that proved a colleague guilty of murder and then having an affair with a married coworker, she transfers from London's Metropolitan Police to coastal Kent. She and daughter Zoë settle on the Dungeness headland, known for its austere, natural beauty. Soon Alex is embroiled in another case. A woman appears on the doorstep of her biological son, Julian, whom she gave up for adoption when he was a toddler. Although she's obviously homeless and displaying signs of previous heroin addiction, Julian welcomes the stranger into his home and invites her to stay overnight. The following morning, the woman has disappeared. However, on that same night, supposedly the same woman is found dead in a drainage ditch on the Dungeness headland. Other bodies are found, including a badly beaten man who was abandoned in a farm's manure pit. Searching for the true identities of the deceased leads Alex and her team to the peace movements of the 1980s, a web of migrant workers, and unbridled greed. VERDICT Shaw's rattling good writing will hold readers to the very end. Fans of the author's "Breen and Tozer" series as well as aficionados of atmospheric British procedurals will enjoy this series launch.--Penelope J.M. Klein, Fayetteville, NY

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Starred review from April 30, 2018
Introduced in 2017’s The Birdwatcher, Det. Sgt. Alexandra Cupidi takes the lead in Shaw’s excellent police procedural set in the coastal marshlands of Kent. Cupidi gets called out to a remote drainage ditch, where an unidentified woman was found dead of unknown causes. Nearly naked and with no identifying marks, the woman appears to have been in the water for about 10 days. Cupidi and Constable Jill Ferriter have very little to go on, even when they do get a name to put to their corpse. The stakes rise with the subsequent discovery of another body, this time in a farm’s covered manure pit. As Cupidi and Ferriter dig further into the deaths, they discover links to the 1980s peace protests on Greenham Common and the current opioid addiction crisis. Shaw does a fine job depicting Cupidi’s relationships with her teenage daughter and her mother as well as her partnership with Ferriter, with whom she becomes increasingly at ease. The combination of great characters and a gripping plot will leave readers eager for a sequel. Agent: Kari Stuart, Curtis Brown.