William Shaw - Deadland

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Very good

I thought Deadland was very good. I’ve read a couple of William Shaw’s Breen and Tozer series which I didn’t like quite as much as many people, but this present-day book is better, I think.

Set in Kent, this features DS Alex Cupidi in a story of two seemingly unrelated crimes; the discovery of a human arm in a prestigious art exhibit and two young lads stealing the wrong mobile phone and finding themselves relentlessly pursued by its murderous owner. It’s a clever, well told tale which had me hooked pretty well from the start and which I enjoyed very much. Cupidi is a good protagonist with her own issues (of course) and a fairly typically difficult teenage daughter, but these don’t intrude too much into the narrative and Shaw’s characters in general are well painted and convincing. The story is also a good deal more plausible than many, and even the obligatory climax is reasonably believable (and doesn’t, thank heavens, involve the killer laboriously explaining everything to a helpless captive before...etc, etc, etc).

Shaw writes very well in readable unobtrusive prose and avoids the clichés of the genre very well – so that it really stands out when we get a clunkily unnecessary “It would only take five minutes. What could go wrong in that time?” It’s a minor aberration in an otherwise very enjoyable read.

In summary, I thought his was a very decent crime novel, which made a refreshing change after reading quite a few disappointing thrillers recently. It’s not an unmissable classic, but it’s a cut above much of the rest. Recommended.