Thursday, July 21, 2016

Damien Boyd’s “As the Crow Flies”


Jake Fayter is an experienced climber. He’s been working a new climb, and that’s where he is at the moment, watched by a number of tourists from the car park below. And then the unthinkable happens – his trailing rope becomes unknotted and falls behind him. He’s frozen in place as he tries mentally to work his way out of a very dangerous situation. When he begins to shake, he knows he’s finished. The tourists watch in horror as he falls to his death.

Detective Inspector (DI) Nick Dixon of the Avon and Somerset CID in Britain is called by his boss to investigate the death. When his chief mentions the name of the deceased, Nick realizes it’s his friend, the man who taught him to climb. They were close friends until Nick went to work with London Metropolitan Police. He’s moved to Avon and Somerset by his own choice, and now he has to consider what happened to his friend.

What he knows about his friend tells him this wasn’t an accident.

Damien Boyd
As the Crow Flies is the first in the DI Nick Dixon series by British author Damien Boyd. It’s technically a police procedural, but it’s also one good story about rock climbing, friendship, and how things are often never what they seem.

As Dixon and his team investigate, he begins to learn things about his dead friend that he never knew and never would have suspected, starting with a career in rock climbing doesn’t usually result in buying a very expensive automobile, among a lot of other things. And he learns that this was no accident, and begins to discover more possible motives than he can almost handle.

Boyd is the author of four other Nick Dixon mystery stories: Head in the Sand; Kickback; Swansong; and Dead Level. He has extensive experience in criminal law in the UK and worked for a time with the Crown Prosecution Service.

As the Crow Flies is entertaining and intriguing, and one of those mysteries that’s difficult to put down.


Photograph by Linnaea Mallette via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

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