THE THING ITSELF

An ice-cold case heats up.

Disgraced former Chief Constable Bob Watts has never given up his hope of solving the 1934 Brighton Trunk Murder. Upon the death of his father, well-known author and former police constable Victor Tempest, Watts finds a treasure trove of new information in his papers. Back in the present, DS Sarah Gilchrist, who’s still living down the trouble she’s been in over the Milldean Massacre that brought Watts down, finds herself in even hotter water for giving an illegal weapon to her friend, reporter Kate Simpson, who uses it to a kill a rapist. And Jimmy Tingley, ex-SAS and friend of Watts, is in Europe on the trail of the Balkan gangsters who’ve been trying to take over the Brighton crime scene (The Last King of Brighton, 2011, etc). The information his father left Watts, which reaches all the way back to his grandfather’s World War I experiences and death, details Tempest’s life as a police constable, a member of Oswald Mosley’s fascist organization, and a friend of both Ian Fleming and a long string of lawbreakers. It’s no secret to Watts that the lives of the constabulary and the criminals of Brighton have long been deeply intertwined, but as he continues to investigate, the information becomes steadily more shocking.

Guttridge’s third Brighton thriller is so well-written that it would be well worth your time even if it were not such a darkly brilliant mystery.