"Death Behind Closed Doors" by Jon Neal

This is a classic whodunnit murder mystery, perfectly paced. Private Investigator Stanley Messina, fresh from his triumph in The Other Path, is called in by retired DI Jack Sheppard to reopen Jack's last case, the one he failed to solve. Each of the small group of people who knew the victim are interviewed, new facts are brought to light.  Of course, everyone has a secret. Old tensions are reignited and, as the murderer is exposed, there is a life-and-death climax. 

It might sound like the standard pattern but this author breathes new life into the format. Telling the story in the third person, and from the perspective of most of the participants, he focuses on an acute understanding psychology of the characters. In particular, there is unresolved history between the PI and the DI which provides both another fascinating mystery for the reader to solve and some sizzling tension between the two of them, men with very different approaches to life. We learn something of the back story of Jack and a little more of Stanley's; I hope subsequent books will allow us to uncover the whole of this complex character.

This is a very readable story told with skill and style. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Selected quotes:

• "It was always going to be the tightrope on which they’d have to tread. If there was ever to be a way forward, they would need to tiptoe carefully across the divide, trying to find the right balance." (Ch 1)
• "he still wrestled with memories of who he used to be, with thoughts flashing back when he least expected them. They burst into the present like a rampaging uninvited guest" (Ch 5)
• "He didn’t want to be cynical. Although it was a challenge not to be. Hard not to baulk at how naïve he’d been." (Ch 5)
• "Every dream comes with compromise." (Ch 6)
• "having a child made you more aware of age. That ever-creeping ascending number." (Ch 6)
• "Always better, he found, to be running slightly late for everything. No opportunity then for the devil to make work for idle hands." (Ch 8)
• "She didn’t speak. Just moved her lips in a way that looked as if she was chewing on the words she might once had said." (Ch 10)
• "If life had taught him anything over the last couple of difficult years, it was that change happened whether you liked it or not." (Ch 17)

April 2024; 

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God