A Dance of Ghosts

April 14, 2014
At the start of children’s author Brooks’s solid first adult novel, PI John Craine is sitting in a parked car videotaping Preston Elliot, who’s suspected of falsely claiming he severely injured his back at work, on a mean street in the dreary English town of Hey. When Elliot notices he’s being filmed, he goes over to Craine’s car and destroys the detective’s camcorder. Craine, a classic tortured soul, whose wife was brutally murdered in their bedroom 16 years earlier, soon finds himself in more trouble. Helen Gerrish, a bizarre and nervous woman, hires him to investigate the disappearance of her grown daughter, Anna, who the police believe scampered off on her own accord. Craine’s search for Anna takes him into Hey’s violent, drug-addled underground—and, eventually, into a confrontation with his own dark past. The plot meanders, but fans of contemporary British noir will be satisfied.

May 1, 2014
This fine novel works interesting changes on a couple of detective-story standbys. It even manages to intertwine them. The first is the shattered cop trying to rebuild his life as a PI. The second is the DNA left on a victim's body and traced to a dead man. John Craine was a copper in a southern English town. He came home to find his wife brutally murdered. We meet him later as a feckless PI, humiliated by the man he's trailing. Craine doesn't fret; he has another Scotch. He's had gallons since the murder. Then he's hired to find a missing young woman, and his inquiries create new questions. Why were the police so indifferent? Why are the police officers who pretended to investigate the same ones who failed to solve his wife's murder? And what about that DNA? When the answers come, are they about corruption or just another sad family history? Readers who don't want to brood on that will be happy to know that Brooks has provided a fine shootout finale. A tense, compulsive read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)