"In the Key of Death" by Scott Hunter

DCI Brendan Moran is actually retiring from the Thames Valley Police. Nobody, including Moran, can quite believe it, but it’s his retirement party and everyone is celebrating. His love interest Alice is there, too, and things have moved well beyond serious. 

The phone rings early the next morning. It’s Moran boss. The police officer taking Moran’s place had a bit too much to drink and was in an accident on the way home. He’s now in the hospital, and the prognosis is grim. And the boss wouldn’t be calling except there’s been a murder and there’s no senior investigating officer to take charge. Might Moran consider coming back to lead the investigation?

 

Moran does, much to Alice’s anger. The case is a disturbing one. An elderly woman has been found with her hands nailed to her piano. The official cause of death will be determined to be a heart attack brought on by the trauma. Her sister, who discovered the body, the victim’s piano students, and everyone who knew her are shocked; she didn’t have an enemy in the world and was universally loved. And she has been a master pianist.

 

It would be a Brendan Moran stories without side stories, usually involving the police. There’s Moran’s rapidly deteriorating love life. One of his team witnesses an accidental death and agrees, at least initially, to help cover it up. An old nemesis, a vicious MI-6 agent protected by the government despite her killing two innocent people, makes an unexpected and unwelcome return. And his Number 2 on the team is rather furious at Moran’s return and is doing what he can to undermine him.

 

Scott Hunter

The investigation will take Moran and his team into the past and ultimately depend upon chemical analyses, a bust fragment, and an old woman’s memory to finally piece the puzzle together.

 

In the Key of Death is the 10^th and hopefully not the final in the Irish Detectives series by British author Scott Hunter. With all of the characters and sub-plots, it requires a close reading, but it is a richly rewarding one. Hunter spins a good tale, often keeping the reader biting his nails and telling himself “It’s just a story; it’s just a story.”

And I'm putting in my plea for there to be an eleventh in the series.

The Irish Detective series includes Black December, Creatures of Dust, Death Walks Behind You, A Crime for All Seasons, Silent as the Dead, Gone Too Soon, The Enemy Inside, When Stars Grow Dark, The Cold Light of Death and Closer to the Dead. Hunter has also published the novels The Trespass, The Ley Lines of Lushbury, Long Goodbyes, and The Serpent & the Slave, and the memoir Rattle and Drum.  In addition to writing fiction, Hunter is an IT consultant and musician. He lives with his family in England.

 

Related:

 

My review of Black December by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Creatures of Dust by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Death Walks Behind You by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Silent as the Dead by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Gone Too Soon and A Crime for All Seasons by Scott Hunter.

 

The Enemy Inside by Scott Hunter.

 

When Starts Grow Dark by Scott Hunter.

 

The Cold Light of Death by Scott Hunter.

 

Closer to the Dead by Scott Hunter.

 

The Fragile Cage by Scott Hunter.

 

Some Thursday Readings

 

On Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” – Allen Tate at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

The Backlist: Joe R. Lonsdale on a Forgotten Classic of Southern Noir – Polly Stewart at CrimeReads.

 

Historical Society Confirms Supreme Court Justices Were Secretly Recorded at Event – Zachary Stieber at The Epoch Times. 

 

Following the Greek Cross and the Overland Campaign – Samuel Flowers at Emerging Civil War.

"Closer to the Dead" by Scott Hunter

Detective Chief Inspector Brendan Moran and his team at the Thames Valley Police have been given a cold case, a 40-year-old cold case to be precise. In 1981, a young woman working at a Royal Air Force base was waiting to be picked up for a babysitting job for the family of a senior RAF officer. She never made it; she was stabbed to death and her body found the next day. The police investigation at the time went nowhere.  

A related team, under Moran’s former subordinate Charlie Parker, is trying to find Connie Chan, the murderous villain of The Cold Light of Death was caught at the end of that story but managed to escape from her hospital bed. What Moran, Parker, and their respective teams don’t know is that Chan is out for revenge – against Moran – and has hacked her way into a team member’s laptop – and thus the police system. She’s tracking the inside accounts of the police investigation, as well as private, non-investigation emails, and she knows exactly how she’s going to extract revenge against Moran.

 

What neither Chan nor the police teams see coming is the convergence of the two separate investigations.

 

Scott Hunter

Closer to the Dead is the ninth Irish Detective story by British crime writer Scott Hunter. It’s an action-packed police procedural that, like its predecessors, sees its police team members facing as much physical harm as the murderer’s victims and intended victims. 

 

The “Irish Detective” series includes Black December, Creatures of Dust, Death Walks Behind You, A Crime for All Seasons, Silent as the Dead, Gone Too Soon, The Enemy Inside, When Stars Grow Dark, The Cold Light of Death andCloser to the Dead. Hunter has also published the novels The Trespass, The Ley Lines of Lushbury, Long Goodbyes, and The Serpent & the Slave, and the memoir Rattle and Drum.  In addition to writing fiction, Hunter is an IT consultant and musician. He lives with his family in England.

 

Closer to the Dead maintains the same high quality and fast-paced narratives of the previous Brendan Moran stories. And we see a lead detective struggling with his own personal issues and those of the people he’s coming to care for.

 

Related:

 

My review of Black December by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Creatures of Dust by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Death Walks Behind You by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Silent as the Dead by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Gone Too Soon and A Crime for All Seasons by Scott Hunter.

 

The Enemy Inside by Scott Hunter.

 

When Starts Grow Dark by Scott Hunter.

 

The Cold Light of Death by Scott Hunter.

“The Cold Light of Death” by Scott Hunter

For the first third of the book, I wasn’t sure I was reading a DCI Brendan Moran novel by British author Scott Hunter. I checked the titled page at least twice to make sure.  

In Chapter 14, all becomes clear. But the first 13 chapters are set in 1976, and the Reading police are investigating the death of a shop owner. It appears to be a classic robbery gone awry, but Emma Hardy, 26, a newly appointed detective sergeant and in charge of the investigation, isn’t sure. It’s clear the shop owner knew his killer – he was bashed on the back of the head near the back door, as if he knew whomever had come to the back door. The till money is missing, which suggests a robbery, but DS Hardy is suspicious.

 

Her investigation chases down several promising leads; the shop owner wasn’t all he appeared to be. And a witness has reported seeing a suspicious man loitering near the shop shortly before the man was killed. The police artist draws a likeness, and it looks uncannily like one of Hardy’s own police detectives. And then DS Hardy goes missing. The investigation continues, and a suspect is apprehended with the dead man’s book of loans outstanding. The reader knows, or at least thinks he or she knows, what’s happened. 

 

Scott Hunter

Fast forward 45 years. A body is found interred in the old police garage that’s being torn down. Knowing the date of construction leads Detective Chief Inspector and his team to check for missing persons in 1976. They discover the listing for DS Emma Hardy, but the body turns out to be a male, one also connected to the shop owner’s death in 1976. 

 

The Cold Light of Death is the 8^th mystery novel in the DCI Brendan Moran series. While the reader thinks the story (and the killer) is known, and this is a story of how Moran and his crew ferret out the truth, it becomes something different. And it turns out we didn’t know as much as we thought we did.

 

The “Irish Detective” series includes Black December, Creatures of Dust, Death Walks Behind You, A Crime for All Seasons, Silent as the Dead, Gone Too Soon, The Enemy Inside, When Stars Grow Dark, and The Cold Light of Death. Hunter has also published the novels The Trespass, The Ley Lines of Lushbury, Long Goodbyes, and The Serpent & the Slave, and the memoir Rattle and Drum.  In addition to writing fiction, Hunter is an IT consultant and musician. He lives with his family in England.

 

The Cold Light of Death takes a while before it reaches the Brendan Moran story, but it turns out to be one of the best in the series, full of twists and surprises.

 

Related:

 

My review of Black December by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Creatures of Dust by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Death Walks Behind You by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Silent as the Dead by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Gone Too Soon and A Crime for All Seasons by Scott Hunter.

 

The Enemy Inside by Scott Hunter.

 

When Starts Grow Dark by Scott Hunter.

"When Stars Grow Dark" by Scott Hunter

It looks like a traffic accident involving a truck and a passenger car on a rainy night. Three people have died in the crash and resulting fire. Tragic but not unusual – except one of the people in the car, an elderly man, was already dead before the accident. He’d been smothered. 

DCI Brendan Moran, still recovering from his last experience with criminals (The Enemy Inside), looks to be a sideline role in the investigation. Except the lead, DI Charlie Pepper, has to go to Scotland to coordinate with police there on what looks like similar deaths of elderly men. While she’s gone, Moran takes charge of the Thames Valley investigation. 

 

It’s an investigation where nothing is straightforward. No witness seems to want to tell the full truth, at least all at once. The truck driver turned out to be from Rotterdam, and evidence recovered includes a gun underneath his seat, traces of the explosive Semtex, and a partially destroyed credit card bearing the name of the government agent who disappeared in The Enemy Inside. Moran uses his weekend off to go to Amsterdam, unaware that one of his own policeman is being compromised by similar government agents. Or is it the Russians?

 

Scott Hunter

When Stars Grow Dark is the seventh in the DCI Brendan Moran stories by British author Scott Hunter, and it’s a non-stop roll of mischief, lying, mayhem, deception, and murder.

 

The “Irish Detective” series includes Black December, Creatures of Dust, Death Walks Behind You, A Crime for All Seasons, Silent as the Dead, Gone Too Soon, The Enemy Inside, When Stars Grow Dark, and The Cold Light of Death. Hunter has also published the novels The Trespass, The Ley Lines of Lushbury, Long Goodbyes, and The Serpent & the Slave, and the memoir Rattle and Drum.  In addition to writing fiction, Hunter is an IT consultant and musician. He lives with his family in England.

 

It helps to have read The Enemy Inside, the sixth story in the series, before tackling When Stars Grow Dark (advice that the author includes at the beginning). It’s a grand sweep of a story, stretching from Scotland and England to the Netherlands and involving government agents and serial killers. Hunter ties it all together into one satisfying mystery novel.

 

Related:

 

My review of Black December by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Creatures of Dust by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Death Walks Behind You by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Silent as the Dead by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Gone Too Soon and A Crime for All Seasons by Scott Hunter.

 

The Enemy Inside by Scott Hunter.

"The Enemy Inside" by Scott Hunter

Reading The Enemy Inside by British author Scott Hunter is like opening a Kachina doll. Just when you think it’s all figured out, the story changes on you. It’s difficult enough to pull off in a novel; this is a novella. 

The sixth story in Hunter’s Irish Detective series, it begins with a would-be jumper. A man looks as if he’s going to jump from the top-level of a six-story Oxford car park, just as DCI Brendan Moran of the Thames Valley Police is doing his weekly food shopping at Sainsbury’s. He talks with the man as two policemen come up behind him and keep him from jumping. The would-be jumper is taken into custody but released a few hours later. 

 

Scott Hunter

First Kachina doll is the almost-suicide. The second is that it wasn’t. The third is that Moran knows the man from years before, from his days as a policeman in Ireland. The fourth is that the man is after Moran – for revenge. And then the reader keeps opening Kachina doll after Kachina doll, as the story moves inevitably toward its tense, and even more unexpected, ending. 

 

The “Irish Detective” series includes Black December, Creatures of Dust, Death Walks Behind You, A Crime for All Seasons, Silent as the Dead, Gone Too Soon, The Enemy Inside, When Stars Grow Dark, and The Cold Light of Death. Hunter has also published the novels The Trespass, The Ley Lines of Lushbury, Long Goodbyes, and The Serpent & the Slave, and the memoir Rattle and Drum.  In addition to writing fiction, Hunter is an IT consultant and musician. He lives with his family in England.

 

The Enemy Inside makes you think about who your neighbors, colleagues, and friends really are. DCI Moran is going to experience more than one surprise, and all in the passing of a day.

 

 

Related:

 

My review of Black December by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Creatures of Dust by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Death Walks Behind You by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Silent as the Dead by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Gone Too Soon and A Crime for All Seasons by Scott Hunter.

DCI Brendan Moran: Novel and Short Stories

Detective Chief Inspector Brendan Moran of the Thames Valley Police is back, and once again it’s downright dangerous to be a police officer on his team.

Moran is called to the scene of one of his oddest investigations yet. The body of a young woman, a singer on the verge of stardom, is found in a cemetery. She’s been buried in a coffin, and there’s a recording of her voice, acknowledging but not exactly explaining her suicide. But the fact of being buried suggests she had assistance. 

As Moran and his team begin their investigation, they find boyfriends, parents, and associates stricken with grief. The pathologist’s report confirms death by asphyxiation, consistent with the burial. Analysis of the recording does not – it’s actually a very clever splicing together of different statements. A strange suicide investigation becomes an even stranger murder investigation.

Scott Hunter

Moran, himself still recovering from his experiences in Ireland (Silent as the Dead), takes charges when his chief subordinate is hospitalized for a physical ailment. Another officer is still recovering from almost being killed in a bomb plot. Two more have to dive for cover when a possible suspect, being escorted between them, is shot to death. 

The officers, possible suspects, and the investigation itself is dogged by a mysterious figure, the tall man in a hat and coat who has a distinctly unmemorable face. 

Gone Too Soon is the fifth Irish Detective story by British author Scott Hunter that stars Moran and his ever-changing and always threatened team. Like its predecessors, it tells a fascinating, sometimes gruesome story where nothing is ever as it seems, every character is rightfully considered a suspect, and the individual police officers themselves are subject to temptation and going off on their own.

Hunter has also published a collection of six short stories, A Crime for All Seasons, that also star Moran and his officers. The stories use the months of the year as titles, and this volume covers January through June (a second one is in the works, with stories covering the rest of the year). 

The stories are less intense than the nail-biting novels, and involve the missing wife of a local archaeologist; a member of Parliament who may, or may not, have been caught in an affair and has disappeared; a gun and a seed left at the scene of a crime; a young woman whose body is found in the lake of her estate; a novice missing from a convent; and a stakeout of an art gallery where a theft may be about to happen. We find generally calmer, gentler tales than the five novels, but they do offer a break from often absolute mayhem while including the familiar characters from the series.

The “Irish Detective” series includes Black December, Creatures of Dust, Death Walks Behind You, A Crime for All Seasons, Silent as the Dead, and Gone Too Soon. Hunter has also published the novels The Trespass, The Ley Lines of Lushbury, Long Goodbyes, and The Serpent & the Slave, and the memoir Rattle and Drum.  In addition to writing fiction, Hunter is an IT consultant and musician. He lives with his family in England.

Related:

My review of Black December by Scott Hunter.

My review of Creatures of Dust by Scott Hunter.

My review of Death Walks Behind You by Scott Hunter.

My review of Silent as the Dead by Scott Hunter.

"Silent as the Dead" by Scott Hunter

Thames Valley Police Detective Chief Inspector Brendan Moran has left his home base of Reading and gone to the southwestern coast of Ireland. The wife of an old friend has disappeared, and Moran finds himself rummaging through the present and the past, including his own past, to find out what’s happened and where the woman is.

He’s on home turf here; this is where he was raised, and it’s the family he was raised with. And it’s his deceased first wife’s family as well. Decades in the past, she was killed in a car bombing that was meant for him.

Moran gets some leads from the local pub owner, another old friend, but the man will pay for his life for giving our t information; his body is found is found in the trunk of Moran’s car. The police haul Moran in for questioning and he spends the night in what he thinks is the police station. All signs point to Sean Black, the policeman’s old nemesis and a renegade Irish Republican. And what Moran gradually uncovers looks like a well-conceived plot to kill a prominent member of the royal family – back in Reading.

Silent as the Dead is the fourth Brendan Moran novel by British mystery writer Scott Hunter, and it’s a dandy story that keeps you on the edge of your seat. 

Scott Hunter

The “Irish Detective” series includes Black December, Creatures of Dust, Death Walks Behind You, A Crime for All Seasons (short stories), Silent as the Dead, and Gone Too Soon. Hunter has also published the novels The Trespass, The Ley Lines of Lushbury, Long Goodbyes, and The Serpent & the Slave, and the memoir Rattle and Drum.  In addition to writing fiction, Hunter is an IT consultant and musician. He lives with his family in England.

In Silent as the Dead, the past catches up and merges with the present, nothing is ever left behind or forgotten, and nothing – not even old friends – is what it seems. 

Related:

My review of Black December by Scott Hunter.

My review of Creatures of Dust by Scott Hunter.

My review of Death Walks Behind You by Scott Hunter.

“Death Walks Behind You” by Scott Hunter

Detective Chief Inspector Brendan Moran of the Thames Valley Police is doing something unusual – he’s taking a holiday. He’s rented a cottage near a small town in Devon, and he’s already discovered the local pub. He’s having a pint with the pub owner and an attractive local woman, when they’re interrupted by a loud and upset American who’s looking for a friend. She leaves almost immediately, and not too long afterward the local woman leaves as well – and quickly returns. The American is dead in her rented car. Moran’s holiday is turning into a busman’s holiday. 

Before the local police can investigate, the body and the car have disappeared. The policeman responsible for the area is loath to investigate. The owner of the area’s big du Courcy manor (the manor goes back to the days of William the Conqueror) seems involved in some way. Then come the reports of earlier deaths and missing persons.

Scott Hunter

Back at Thames Valley police headquarters, one of Moran’s top team members has been found strangled with a wire in his bed It wouldn’t be a Brendan Moran story without at least one police officer being killed). And the high-flying investigating officer seems utterly determined to pin the murder on Moran’s trusted #2, with a lot of circumstantial evidence.

Death Walks Behind You by Scott Hunter is the third in the Irish Detective series, featuring DCI Brendan Moran. And it’s a riveting tale, action-packed and creative tension on every page.

The “Irish Detective” series includes Black December, Creatures of Dust, Death Walks Behind You, A Crime for All Seasons (short stories), Silent as the Dead, and Gone Too Soon. Hunter has also published the novels The Trespass, The Ley Lines of Lushbury, Long Goodbyes, and The Serpent & the Slave, and the memoir Rattle and Drum.  In addition to writing fiction, Hunter is an IT consultant and musician. He lives with his family in England.

Death Walks Behind You is a tense, tautly-woven story, making you want to do something violent to the bad guys while you’re yelling at the good guys to do something. Hunter has done a fine job with these first three Brendan Moran mysteries.

Related:

My review of Black December by Scott Hunter.

My review of Creatures of Dust by Scott Hunter.

"Creatures of Dust" by Scott Hunter

It’s downright dangerous to be on the team of Detective Chief Inspector Brendan Moran of the Thames Valley Police. In Black December, one of his men experiences a gruesome kind of torture. In Creatures of Dust, policeman have heart attacks, are beaten almost to death by local villains, and even worse. 

Moran himself, having barely survived an automobile crash, is plagued by blackout periods and a noticeable limp. He’s seen his garage blown up (and people die) and he had barely escaped death at the hands of evildoers many times. 

Now he’s on the trail of a serial killer who’s seems to be targeting area Muslims. A young man is knifed to death; so is an IT consultant. Both are Muslims. And then a Catholic priest dies the same way in the confessional box. The killer isn’t just limiting himself to Muslims. The only anomaly was a killing that happened at the same time as the first – an undercover policewoman. And other departments want Moran well away from investigating her death, even to the point of taking over Moran’s murder investigations. Something smells fishy in the Thames Valley Police.

Scott Hunter

This is the second in the “Irish Detective” series by British author Scott Hunter. The series includes Black December, Creatures of Dust, Death Walks Behind You, A Crime for All Seasons (short stories), and Silent as the Dead. In addition to writing his crime fiction, Hunter is an IT consultant and musician. He lives with his family in England.

Criminal activity seems rampant in Thames Valley, both on the streets and in the police department. DCI Moran often finds his hands tied, but he always figures out a way to bring the guilty to justice. Even if a lot of his fellow police officers have to die along the way. Creatures of Dust is a fast-paced, anything-is-bound-to-happen-and-likely-will kind of story.

Related:

My review of Black Decemberby Scott Hunter.