Reckless Endangerment

September 9, 2013
Ison throws his readers more than a few curveballs in the 11th mystery featuring irascible Divisional Det. Insp. Ernest Hardcastle, of the Metropolitan Police (after 2012’s Hardcastle’s Frustration). On New Year’s Eve 1915, the DDI’s plans for celebrating are disrupted by the murder of jeweler and pawnbroker Reuben Gosling. A witness reports seeing two men speed off in a motorcar, but when the police locate the vehicle’s owner, wealthy Sinclair Villiers, he plausibly denies any involvement. Routine police work leads to the discovery that Sinclair’s army captain son, Haydn, who often borrows the car, spent the night of the crime with his colonel’s wife. Hardcastle, theorizing that an enemy of Haydn’s was trying to frame him, looks into an espionage angle, only to find British intelligence intervening in the case. Ison does little to distinguish Hardcastle from countless other gruff series leads, but he does offer readers a genuinely unusual secret at the heart of the mystery.

May 1, 2014
DCI Harry Brock (Make Them Pay, 2013, etc.) investigates the murder of an accountant and the disappearance of his wife.Brock wants to make one thing clear: When the folks at Homicide and Serious Crime Command West want him, they're more likely to find him in the bed of his shapely blonde paramour, chorus dancer Gail Sutton, than in his own. So when Gavin Creasey calls Brock from the incident room at the Met, he's taken aback to find Harry in his own flat. Despite his unusual starting point, Brock finds his way to West Drayton, where Clifford Gregory lies in his bed with a massive head wound and Gregory's wife, Sharon, sits shaken and bruised in the spare room. She claims she went downstairs, naked, to confront an intruder, who immediately tied her up and killed her pixilated husband. Brock and his team, DI Kate Ebdon and DS Dave Poole, are skeptical, and forensic evidence increases their doubt. None of the scotch drenching Gregory's body is found in his stomach, and it turns out he was suffocated, not bludgeoned to death. Further probing reveals that flight attendant Sharon Gregory, bored with her husband's absorption in reconciling people's books and building model planes, has acquired a string of lovers stretching from Heathrow to Miami. So when Sharon goes missing, it's a fairly straightforward matter of interviewing one of her men after another, and pretty soon, Harry's back under the duvet snuggling with the comely Ms. Sutton.Brock's not half as smooth as he thinks he is and not nearly witty enough to get this case airborne.

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September 6, 2010
Det. Chief Insp. Harry Brock and Det. Sgt. Dave Poole investigate the deaths of James and Diana Barton, a wealthy London couple who are murdered one week apart, in Ison's overplotted 10th Brock and Poole mystery (after 2009's Breach of Privilege). After Diana's body is discovered in the aftermath of a fire in her Chelsea house where a sex party is held while James is out of the country, Brock and Poole uncover the many extramarital affairs that she had had before her murder. As the number of suspects, including Diana's Australian daughter-in-law, increase to complicating effect, the characters lose their distinction and the plot becomes increasingly bogged down in repetitive dialogue. Diana's ex-husband, former lovers, and a con man in Australia all become part of a case that reaches a climax over a disputed inheritance of several million pounds. Weak characterizations, including those of Brock and Poole, diminish a story that fails under the weight of lackluster writing.

April 1, 2014
When DCI Brock and his sergeant, Dave Poole, are called to the scene of a brutal murder, they have no idea what's in store for them. Meek accountant Clifford Gregory has been killed by an intruder, and his glamorous, flight-attendant wife, Sharon, has been left tied up and naked. Clearly shaken, Sharon can hardly tell the coppers what happened, but something about her story seems off. Brock and Poole wonder if she's quite the innocent victim she claims to be, and their suspicions seem to be confirmed when Sharon disappears a few days later. When she's found strangled in a hotel near Heathrow Airport, the two detectives know the case won't be straightforward. Their investigation takes them from some of London's seediest nightclubs to a swingers' soiree in a distant suburb and eventually exposes Sharon as a woman with dozens of sexual relationships, including salesmen, importers, and even a future earl. As usual, solid plotting, realistic descriptions of police work, and dry wit make Ison's latest an entertaining read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)