Monday, March 6, 2023

“A Roman Shadow” by H L Marsay


Detective Chief Inspector John Shadow and his sergeant Jimmy Chang are asked to visit a museum in York dedicated to Roman antiquities. Someone seems to have stolen valuable Roman coins and replaced them with fakes. The museum staff isn’t sure when this might have happened; it could have been anytime during the previous eight months. 

Sgt. Chang also seems to be acting weirdly, and Shadow is half afraid he’s getting ready to dump his girlfriend, the coroner the police prefer over the chief coroner. Added to the mix is a missing Chinese tourist, a young girl who had joined a tour of Britain late and who now seems to have disappeared. And this is in top of a previously reported missing Chinese girl. What’s even stranger is that both girls have the same passport name.

 

Shadow suspects that all these crimes – the theft of the coins, the missing girls – may be linked. A reseller of chocolates may be involved. Someone at the museum may be involved. But everyone, including Shadow, thinks Shadow is off on this suspicion.

 

H L Marsay

A Roman Shadow
 is the fourth mystery novel in the DCI John Shadow series by British author H L Marsay. It has all the hallmarks of its predecessors, a well-written mystery, a curmudgeonly chief detective, plenty of references to restaurants in York (Shadow, who lives on a boat, dines out for most meals), an overly enthusiastic detective sergeant, and a way of tying a number of disparate narrative streams together.

 

Marsay is the author of six mystery novels in the DCI John Shadow series. Set in York, the characteristic features of each of the stories are a curmudgeonly DCI, his irrepressibly cheerful sergeant, a culinary tour of the city restaurants, café, and pubs (some of which actually exist), and an introduction to York’s colorful history and present. A member of the Crime Writers Association, she lives with her family in the city of York in England.

 

 

Related

 

A Long Shadow by H L Marsay.

 

A Viking’s Shadow by H L Marsay.

 

A Ghostly Shadow by H L Marsay.

 

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