The Thing Itself

August 6, 2012
Powerful flashback scenes carry Guttridge’s third Brighton crime novel (after 2011’s The Last King of Brighton). The horror of a prologue, in which an unnamed narrator in 1934 matter-of-factly recounts murdering his mistress, turns to pathos as the killer recalls his experiences in the trenches of WWI. The present finds series protagonist Bob Watts, recently relieved of his duties as chief constable, reviewing papers left behind by his late father, famed thriller writer Victor Temple, concerning the notorious real-life Brighton Trunk Murders. Temple’s theory about the gruesome 1930s-era dismemberments, which may reveal the identity of the opening section’s narrator, also involves a fascinating account of the prewar British fascist movement. Meanwhile, Watts’s former colleague, Det. Sgt. Sarah Gilchrist, probes the cause of his dismissal, a botched police raid that left four innocents dead. If these modern-day scenes are less memorable by comparison, Guttridge manages to end on a satisfying note with his concluding revelations about Watts’s family history.

September 1, 2012
An ice-cold case heats up. Disgraced former Chief Constable Bob Watts has never given up his hope of solving the 1934 Brighton Trunk Murder. Upon the death of his father, well-known author and former police constable Victor Tempest, Watts finds a treasure trove of new information in his papers. Back in the present, DS Sarah Gilchrist, who's still living down the trouble she's been in over the Milldean Massacre that brought Watts down, finds herself in even hotter water for giving an illegal weapon to her friend, reporter Kate Simpson, who uses it to a kill a rapist. And Jimmy Tingley, ex-SAS and friend of Watts, is in Europe on the trail of the Balkan gangsters who've been trying to take over the Brighton crime scene (The Last King of Brighton, 2011, etc). The information his father left Watts, which reaches all the way back to his grandfather's World War I experiences and death, details Tempest's life as a police constable, a member of Oswald Mosley's fascist organization, and a friend of both Ian Fleming and a long string of lawbreakers. It's no secret to Watts that the lives of the constabulary and the criminals of Brighton have long been deeply intertwined, but as he continues to investigate, the information becomes steadily more shocking. Guttridge's third Brighton thriller is so well-written that it would be well worth your time even if it were not such a darkly brilliant mystery.

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October 1, 2012

Guttridge's concluding volume in his brutal trilogy (after The Last King of Brighton and City of Dreadful Night) is essential reading for those haunted by the echoes of unsolved cases. Brighton's infamous "trunk murder" case of 1934 sits front and center, draped in history.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2012
The third in the author's Brighton-set trilogy of mysteries continues the parallel investigations of the (true) unsolved 1930s Brighton Trunk Murder and the (fictional) contemporary Mildean Massacre, this time showing us the trunk murderer's own perspective on those events and, finally, the conclusion of the gripping modern-day story. It might be best to read the first two novels in the series (City of Dreadful Night, 2010, and The Last King of Brighton, 2011) first, since the trilogy is really one story told in three parts, but even read as a stand-alone, the book is gripping and satisfying. Worth noting, too, that readers familiar with the author's previous series, about journalist-turned-sleuth Nick Madrid, should not expect the same sort of jocularity here: the laughs are few and far between. This is a serious, gritty novel designed to shock, captivate, and emotionally drain its readers, and it succeeds on all fronts.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)