Book Review - Western Approaches by Graham Hurley

I’ve been a Hurley follower for years, starting with his thrillers followed by the Faraday and Winter books where Suttle, the protagonist of this new series originates. 

Suttle is this book’s central detective character having moved from gritty Portsmouth to a remote cottage in Dartmoor for better quality of life with his wife and small daughter.  Whilst he loves the rural idyll, Lizzie Suttle feels she’s going mad living in a dump in the middle of nowhere where even the basic amenities don’t work properly.

The book’s crime revolves around the death of a rower, Kinsey, who apparently jumped off the balcony of his luxury top floor apartment.  Kinsey was well known locally, but universally unpopular; a man with no friends, who bought his way into everything.  Suttle is convinced this isn’t suicide and doggedly works to prove to his bosses that Kinsey was actually murdered.  To make things more complicated, the past comes calling in the shape of Pompey heavies who want to track down Paul Winter, a former Police colleague, to “sort him out”.  They demand Suttle’s help to find Winter and won’t take no for an answer.  And just to top it off, Mrs Suttle gets emotionally entangled with a member of the local rowing club putting further strain on marital relationships.

I didn’t find Western Approaches as rewarding as I expected it to be.  It’s well written, but it’s not a fast paced novel – it’s slow and smouldering, actually too slow, particularly the way the investigation develops in the first part of the book.  Although all the ingredients were there, I felt both the crime and the characters needed much more zip.  I read this after a Simon Kernick novel and although the two books are different types, the contrast in pace is startling, highlighting what Western Approaches lacks.  To be fair, it is the first in a new series where Hurley is still setting out his stall.  I hope the next one moves out of third gear and into fifth, where it needs to be.

Romancrimeblogger