Night Fall

May 27, 2013
In British author Smith’s winning 10th mystery featuring Det. Chief Insp. Neil Paget (after 2012’s In the Shadow of Evil), Paget must contend with a new boss, Det. Supt. Amanda Pierce, with whom he has a bitter personal history. He must also try to uncover who was behind the brutal murder of innocuous photographer Billy Travis. Travis’s death is the first of a string of murders that rocks the Shropshire town of Broadminster. As the number of victims mounts—each is bound, marked with a crudely carved “A,” and tossed to his or her death from a height—Paget and his crew strive to find a connection between the crimes. Pierce urges the overworked Paget to rely more on capable Det. Sgt. John Tregalles and newly promoted Det. Sgt. Molly Forsythe. Dealing with grieving relatives, jaundiced views of police, tenuous clues, and increasing administrative pressure, Paget and Pierce achieve a functioning détente in this smoothly plotted, well-written procedural.

June 15, 2013
A new boss provides a unique challenge for DCI Neil Paget (In the Shadow of Evil, 2012, etc.). It isn't easy for Paget to work for his new detective superintendent. Not only did Amanda Pierce snag the job he expected, but, years back, she was married to Paget's wife Jill's brother--a union that led to his brother-in-law's death and Jill's subsequent suicide. Now, Pierce and Paget are both in the pressure cooker with a case that seems as unsolvable as it is bizarre. Billy Travis, a meek, middle-aged photographer, has been flung from a bridge to the railway tracks below. His battered corpse is found with the letter "A" carved into its forehead. No one can imagine who might have killed Billy, and no one saw nothing, no how. When the investigation stalls, Pierce asks Paget to back off, leaving the legwork to his sergeants, Molly Forsythe and John Tregalles. Although she's preoccupied with the uncertainties of her relationship with David Chen, who's gone back to Hong Kong to care for his teenage daughter Lijuan after his ex-wife's death in an auto accident, Molly gives the case her all. But connecting the dots between the loner Travis and any other human being seems daunting. Even the appearance of a second body does little to move the case forward, frustrating both sergeants. Paget soon finds himself in the impossible position of not being able to investigate the case himself while having to prove that his history with Amanda isn't the reason for the deadlock. The complicated back story takes Paget's 10th a step beyond a routine procedural.

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May 1, 2013
DCI Neil Paget of the village of Shropshire is looking into the apparent murder of a local photographer, a man who, by all accounts, had no enemies and provided no one with a motive to do away with him. Also, just to make things as complicated as possible, there's not much in the way of physical evidence, and nobody saw what happened to the man (who was found, trussed up, on the railroad tracks). All of this isn't too great a frustration to Paget, who, as readers of the previous nine novels in the series know, won't let a little paucity of evidence get in his way. But when another body turns up, Paget turns up the heat on the investigation, hoping to discover a connection between the two victims. This is another solid, well-tooled procedural in which, as in Ed McBain's 87th Precinct mysteries, character and dialogue are at least as important as the mechanics of crime-solving. Paget and his teamespecially recurring player DS John Tregallesare all characters we enjoy hanging around with, and readers who are meeting them for the first time here will probably want to play catch-up and grab the earlier books in the series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)