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MURDER IN THE MARSH by Kevin Carey

MURDER IN THE MARSH

by Kevin Carey

Pub Date: Sept. 2nd, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-68-204982-0
Publisher: Darkstroke Books

A troubled cop’s life becomes messier when he witnesses a grisly killing and then becomes a prime suspect.

In Carey’s novel, inebriated patrolman Eddie Devlin stumbles on a murder one rainy night just north of Boston. Heading home in the storm, he sees a car with a flat tire parked near the local swamp so he stops to help. That’s when he spots a man plunging a hooked blade into a woman. Eddie fires his gun repeatedly into the attacker’s chest. But when “the uniforms” respond to Eddie’s call, they find only the cop and the dead woman. The body of the assailant, whom Eddie reportedly shot multiple times, is missing. The culprit, whom a reporter nicknames Cronus after the Greek god who carries a sickle, cannot be found either living or dead. Suspicion falls on Eddie, and he is put on departmental leave while a formal investigation takes place. Although no charges are filed, the department cuts him loose after a year. When two fresh bodies turn up in the marsh, Eddie thinks he’s being set up as a serial killer, possibly because he’s no longer one of the police’s own. In his 40s, out of work, smoking and drinking too much, and living in a near-empty apartment, Eddie becomes haunted by thoughts of Cronus and the murders. It also appears someone—someone Eddie knows—is trying to kill him. Crime victims, drunks, and the occasional cop selling drugs populate Eddie’s bleak, hardscrabble world. There is no humor and very little hope in this engrossing book that emphasizes the dreariness of life in a crime-filled town that has too “many dirty cracks” that allow “the scum to hide.” People are raped, beaten, maimed, slain, or a combination of those atrocities. Beginning in 1980 and concluding a handful of years later, the novel skillfully sets the mood of the time with references to songs and clothes of the period. The author excels at placing readers in an environment permeated with religion, barrooms, and brutality.

A relentlessly grim, absorbing tale about a man with little to lose.