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Reviewed by Ian Miller for Readers' Favorite
The British Olympic team and the Para Olympic team are to be housed (sequentially) at the Aldershot army base over the next forty days, and Sergeant Major Crane is in charge of their security. Also present are some invited officers from the Afghan army for training purposes. The very first day starts of badly, with a soldier's body found in the swimming pool complex. The cause of death is a broken neck, and this could have arisen from a fall, or it could be murder. It is attributed to accidental causes but Crane is far from convinced, but then again he must not disobey his senior officer, who seems more intent on keeping up appearances of everything being under control than in avoiding a disaster. Eventually, another body turns up.
The book is well-written, and the story progresses in a nicely balanced way. The style is 'cozy' and is quite addictive, and once into it, it is not that easy to put it down. One thing I particularly like is that there are no strange pieces of luck to make the story work, and the villains do not have unreasonable luck. The book is somewhat difficult to classify, but this is by no means bad; indeed it could be the foundation for a new sub-genre. It is partly a mystery, and while the reader will probably have a fairly good idea as to who, in general, the villain is, Crane does not know what the reader knows, as the author shows the reader some of what is going through the perpetrator's mind. In principle, it could be a thriller, except that the book advances more through conversation than action, even in the climax. I would describe it as a "cozy thriller" to complement the "cozy mystery" sub-genre. Besides the actual crime investigation, the author also focuses on Crane's personal life, including his problems in maintaining such an investigation when his wife is also about to have a baby. The one slight negative is that in the very final confrontation, while it generates quite a bit of tension, it will have some credibility problems with ardent thriller readers. One assumes from the emphasis given to Crane's family life and the family-job tensions that could arise in the future that Wendy Cartmell intends to write further, and this should be encouraged because she shows genuine skill.
