In the Braidwood nature reserve in Fife, an old man is discovered stabbed to death, a ball of cloth rammed into the back of the victim’s throat.
The only suspect is a teenage neighbour, known to the police for antisocial behaviour – but he has an alibi. When a second elderly man is found, and DI Jim Carruthers and DS Andrea Fletcher start to wonder if it’s the work of a serial killer. Their team is soon deep in a shocking forty year old mystery…
Care To Die is a police procedural at its best: the plot is sufficiently complex without being convoluted, the setting authentic, and the incidents under investigation are all too frighteningly topical.
This is the second book in Tana Collins’ Carruthers & Fletcher series, and can easily be read as a standalone crime novel – I hadn’t read the first, Robbing The Dead, though I certainly will now. However, the investigative team, refreshingly informal, is interesting in its own right – and the chracters, and the relationships between them, definitely ripe for development over a series.
Crime fiction runs awide spectrum from the cosy mystery to the hard core graphic; I’d say this is a decent happy medium. It’s always good to have more Scottish-based drama, too.
Care To Die is published by Bloodhound Books at £8.99 (eBook £1.99)