The Malice of Waves by Mark Douglas-Home

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Hurray, number three in the series and another intelligent read. The author doesn't just write a murder mystery of the 'Here's a body, find the murderer' school, he looks at consequences, causes and effects. This makes for a more thoughtful read, a more complex plot and characters worth reading about.

Cal McGill is now more heavily involved with being a pure Sea Detective and finding bodies and he is employed to find the body of a teenager, Max Wheeler, who disappeared from a tiny uninhabited island 5 years earlier. This happened in the Outer Hebrides and again the islands are very much characters in the story. Mr Wheeler is obsessed with finding his son, his daughters suffer, and the island population is sick of being regarded as an evil bunch who prefer to hide a murderer rather than speak the truth. A lot of cause and effect and its consequences. The police are involved again and so Cal meets up with and works with D.S. Helen Jamieson. It's a complex plot and a good read.

Mark Douglas-Home writes well and his prose is lucid and a pleasure to read. Readers don't need to start with the first novel as each novel stands alone but it does really add to reading pleasure to see how some of the things which happen tie back to earlier stories. If you haven't tried this series and enjoy a different kind of mystery this is one not to miss.



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