Detective Chief Inspector Nick Dixon of the Avon and Somerset Police is considering leaving the force. In fact, he’s interviewing for jobs with law firms; he is a licensed attorney, after all, and he’s had it with the police. During his last case, the internal police watchdogs arrested him for murder and pitched him into a jail cell. It was a stitch-up, and Dixon was eventually cleared, but the experience has left a bitter taste. And no one has apologized.
In the meantime, a new murder case has emerged. Parts of a body have been discovered in a river, and they turn out to belong to a private investigator who was formerly a police officer – and an officer with a penchant for manufacturing evidence. The former cop specialized in staking out plaintiffs suing for workplace injury compensation. Dixon’s fiancée and fellow officer Jane Winters is temporarily in charge, working for Dixon’s boss while Dixon himself is still on leave.
As the police probe what the former cop had been doing before his death, they discover what at first appears to be an unrelated mystery. An art student died, presumably a suicide with an insulin overdose. Dixon, a diabetic himself, suspects otherwise, convinces the coroner to adjourn the hearing with a verdict, and is back in the saddle as a DCI. And what he focuses on is that the former police officer was staking out a plaintiff who lived next door to the dead art student, and he disappeared the day of the girl’s funeral. And somehow all of this seems tied to a mystery street artist named Van Gard, whose spray paintings sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds (this an artist like Banksy).
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| Damien Boyd |
And then more deaths occur.
Death Message is the 13th mystery novel in the Nick Dixon series by British author Damien Boyd, and it’s a crackerjack of a story. The riveting story wraps old crimes and new crimes so closely together, with so many twists and turns, that it takes the reader on a wild, and ultimately satisfying, rollercoaster ride.
Boyd uses his own experience as a legal solicitor and a member of the Crown Prosecution Service to frame his stories, and then infuses considerable research in just the right way. In the novels, Dixon had been a promising young barrister, until he chucked it all and joined the police. As it is, he’s one of the youngest detective inspectors in the Avon and Somerset police force; he’s also the most brilliant at solving cases which look unsolvable.
Related:
My review of Damien Boyd’s As the Crow Flies.
My review of Damien Boyd’s Head in the Sand.
My review of Damien Boyd’s Kickback.
My review of Damien Boyd’s Swansong.
My review of Damien Boyd's Dead Level.
My review of Damien Boyd’s Death Sentence.
My review of Damien Boyd’s Heads or Tails.
My review of Damien Boyd’s Dead Lock.
My review of Damien Boyd’s Beyond the Point.
My review of Down Among the Dead by Damien Boyd.
My review of Dying Inside by Damien Boyd.
My review of Carnival Blues by Damien Boyd.
Some Thursday Readings
On trial for a question – Päivi Räsänen at The Spectator.
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