A Cold Case

February 6, 2017
Maurice Mundy, the 55-year-old hero of this solid series launch from Turnbull (A Dreadful Past and 23 other Hennessy and Yellich mysteries), has recently retired as a detective constable from London’s Metropolitan Police. In order to keep his hand in and add a bit of income to boost his insufficient pension, he has joined Scotland Yard’s Cold Case Review Team. The reason why Mundy never rose in the ranks and was thus unable to slip into a comfortable retirement soon becomes clear: his desire to see justice done, no matter whose toes he steps on. His brief at CCRT is simple: stick to the cold cases and stay out of the way of “proper coppers.” Assigned to re-examine the murder of a 12-year-old boy, Mundy quickly finds a possible link between the child’s death and a case currently being handled by the Essex Police. A melancholy man, Mundy gets his clothes from charity shops and lives on frozen pizza, but his wistfully dogged idealism makes him highly engaging. Readers will look forward to watching his life unfold in future installments.

March 15, 2017
Maurice Mundy is a renegade who doesn't play by the rules or engage in office politics. This may explain why he has never risen above the rank of detective constable. Now that he's reaching retirement, his superiors have put him on cold cases, a role in which they assume he can do relatively little harm. The first case he is assigned to investigate is the decade-old murder of a 12-year-old schoolboy. But Maurice being Maurice, he simply cannot stick to the investigation and instead finds what may be a link to the murder of a prostitute on the same evening the boy died. Not only that, but Maurice starts to suspect there's also a link to the brutal murder of an elderly woman and that the mentally disabled teenager convicted of killing her was innocent. Naturally, his superiors are not pleased with his muddying the waters. This is a very likable police procedural boasting an ingratiating writing style, intricate plotting, and an appealingly quirky protagonist. An enjoyable read for fans looking for something a bit unusual.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)