EVANLY BODIES

Constable Evan Evans’s promotion to the Plain Clothes Division gives him the chance to investigate a strange series of murders.

The new Chief Constable has devised a Major Incidents Division, and when a murder is reported, Evans (Evan Blessed, 2005, etc.) is sent to work with DI Bragg, an unpopular and none too clever publicity-seeker. The victim is head of the History Department at the University of Wales in Bangor. A martinet, unpopular at the University and a trial to his wife, he was shot through an open kitchen window with an old Japanese pistol while his wife was walking the dog. Bragg suspects the widow, but before he can arrest her, he learns that a pizza-parlor owner has been shot with the same weapon. As the team struggles to find a connection between the victims, Evans is also trying to resolve the problems of Jamilla, an English-born Pakistani girl whose parents have recently opened a shop in the village. When her militant-Islamic brother convinces his parents to send her to Pakistan for an arranged marriage, Jamilla disappears. Yet another man is murdered with the Japanese pistol while the police search for her. When Evans discovers Jamilla’s whereabouts, he also finds the clue that solves the case.

The murder plot is derivative, but the wider playing field for the clever, appealing Evans brings both his social and detective skills to the fore.