"Death by Dark Waters" by Jo Allen

The weather in Cumbria has been dry – ideal for grassfires, both natural and set. After one fire, which engulfed part of an old, abandoned farm, a body is found. But it doesn’t appear to be a victim of the fire – the coroner determines the victim was dead before the fire.  

The victim is the 12-year-old son of a wealthy app developer, known for his online dating sites.

 

Detective Chief Inspector Jude Satterthwaite of the Cumbria Police investigates with his team, including a new (and very attractive) detective sergeant. Satterthwaite is three years out from his divorce, and it doesn’t help that his ex-wife lives next door to his mother.

 

Jo Allen

The victim’s father has no use for the police; he’d almost been framed for a crime he didn’t commit by a former police officer in another part of England. He has his own security force at his mansion, which obviously didn’t help protect his family. But the family has secrets, and those secrets will send Satterthwaite and his officers down rabbit holes before they find they right one.

 

But before that, a second murder happens, and the suspects are getting increasingly few on the ground..

 

Death by Dark Waters is the first of eight DCI Satterthwaite mystery novels by British author Jo Allen. It’s a dark tale of passion, betrayal, and utterly ruthless business competition, one with innocent victims suffering the consequences. 

 

Allen is a native of Wolverhampton, England, and has graduate and postgraduate degrees in geography and earth science. After a career as an economic consultant, he began writing short stories, romance, and romantic suspense under the pen name of Jennifer Young. She began writing the DCI Satterthwaite crime novels in 2017. 

Art and Poetry: “A Wider Landscape” by Donald Wilkinson

I found the artist Donald Wilkinson because I was looking for information on poet Jacob Polley. And finding Wilkinson was like finding William Wordsworth all over again.

It’s a reminder of how poetry becomes art becomes poetry.

Polley won the T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry in 2016, for his collection Jackself. It’s an unusual collection, mostly about childhood and utilizing many of the “Jacks” of childhood as the subjects for poems – Jack Frost, Jack Sprat, Jack O’Lantern, and the house that Jack built. While writing an article on the collection for Tweetspeak Poetry, I came across a reference to a poem Polley had written for a published collection of paintings and drawings by an artist named Donald Wilkinson.

Wilkinson, like Polley, is from the north of England, the area known as Cumbria and that we often refer to as the Lake Country. (Norman Nicholson is another poet from the area, one who wrote extensively on the landscape and the environment). Wilkinson, born in 1937, trained in Carlisle and London but is directly associated with “Wordsworth country.”

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph of Scafell Pike Mountain in Cumbria by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

“Murder in Adland” by Bruce Beckham

Detective Inspector Daniel Skelgill of the Cumbria Police is fishing by himself in England’s Lake District – one of the greatest pleasures he finds in life. His mobile phone rings, and he grouses at the interruption as he answers it. There went the pleasure of solitude and fish. A murder has been reported at one of the area hotels.

His usual partner on leave, Skelgill arrives at the hotel still in his fishing gear, and meets his assigned partner – Detective Sergeant Emma Jones. She’s still dressed for an undercover operation at a warehouse rave party, which means barely dressed. Together they begin to investigate the murder of a partner in an advertising firm, co-headquartered in London and Edinburgh and having a firm holiday in the Lake District.

Suspects and possible motives abound. There’s the wife of the deceased, who might have gotten a little tired of her husband’s philandering. There’s the other owner-partner, sweating a possible sale of the fire. There are employees, jealous of both the wife and each other. There’s a former employee, recently fired, who says he was birdwatching but can’t really account for his time.

Bruce Beckham

Murder in Adland is mystery writer Bruce Beckham’s first novel in the Inspector Skelgill Investigates series (there are a total of eight, not to mention three other books not part of the series written by the author). Beckham is an award-winning copywriter and author, lives in Great Britain, and is a member of the Society of Authors. Based on the scenes and settings of this novel, he is also likely well-versed in mountain running, birdwatching, and fishing. And the Lake District.

The detectives’ investigations lead them to London and Edinburgh, with a side trip to Norfolk (for the birdwatching). Time after time each lead ends in nothing, and Skellgill is in danger of losing the case to a rival in the police force. And then he goes fishing, and it is while sitting in his boat on the lake that a seemingly insignificant detail comes to mind.

Written in the present tense (which adds a sense of urgency and even tension), Murder in Adland is an entertaining introduction to a new police detective series.

Photograph of the English Lake District by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Poetic Asides: Norman Nicholson and Frank Stanford

One of the things I’ve learned from writing here at Tweetspeak Poetry is that, when it comes to poetry, the articles you write have a way of continuing to live. They may be reposted or republished on other sites, and they can lead you to continue reading more work by the poets you write about. Consider the poets Norman Nicholson and Frank Stanford.

I was reading A Poet’s Guide to Britain by Owen Sheers, which I wrote about in July. It was there I discovered (1914-1987) and his beautiful poem “Scafell Pike.” I did some digging and was able to find several of his poetry collections through used book dealers (mostly in the UK). And then I wrote in August about how he wrote about the landscape and environment of northern England, the Lake country, and the northwest English coast.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: Norman Nicholson.