14 April 2023.
ISBN: 978-1-91-80405-859-6 (PB)
One very inclement December morning seal-watchers find a body on a beach. Enquiries show that he was a deckhand washed overboard during a storm. A tragic accident, perhaps? But then another body turns up on a drifting pleasure boat, and this was definitely murder.
These two deaths are at the core of this engrossing novel, the fifth in a series. DS Sara Hirst and her colleagues find themselves sucked into an investigation which is concerned mostly with the violent world of organised crime. Lisa (Elisabeta) London, of the Neapolitan di Maletesti mafia family, is the underworld boss and will go to any lengths, however unpleasant, to retain her position and to make sure that everyone who works for her knows it. There are many strands to her empire, amongst them people-trafficking, slave labour, drug running and drug producing. Danni Jordan, London’s invaluable PA, was once a drugs mule for her. London is not a sentimental woman, although she almost surprises us when she orders her underlings to make a ‘decent’ donation as they dump a heavily pregnant woman at a mother-and-baby hostel in Colchester.
Away from organised crime, there is the homeless Mu and her dog Roger. Getting away from violence on the streets of London, Mu has returned to the village where she lived briefly as a youngster. We learn her backstory. On her first evening, sheltering in the remains of a caravan park, she witnesses a troubling event and is then the subject of violence herself with at one stage the fear of rape. This theme of the book is an arresting portrayal of the realities of homelessness and its dangers. Mu’s observations and testimony are essential to the plot, and the only heart-warming episodes of the novel are when the local vicar and his wife take her and Roger under their wing (Roger is also adopted by the cleric’s labrador) and the ladies of the local WI move into action to provide Mu with some sort of future.
The windswept and bleak Norfolk coastline, vividly conveyed, dominates the novel. The unstable cliffs succumb to the high tides and extremely stormy weather at the climax, during which members of the local rugby club (in a rare example of a light touch in this otherwise pretty dark novel) can’t believe their luck at being invited by the police to get involved in a fight. The short chapters keep the various parts of the plot moving along and this is very well-handled. It is worth noting that whereas one family sticks together at all times, the reluctance to do so of another is responsible for incrimination. After all the violence and unpleasantness, the glimmer of hope with which the book ends is welcome.
On the front cover The Norfolk Beach
Murders is described as ‘an absolutely gripping crime thriller’. On this
occasion a publisher’s puff is absolutely correct. This is the first of
Daykin’s novels that I have read, and I hope it is not the last if they are all
as enjoyable as this one.
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Reviewer: David Whittle
Judi Daykin was born in Yorkshire. She has lived, worked and made theatre in Norfolk for the last forty years. She completed her MA in Creative Writing (Crime Fiction) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), and her debut novel was shortlisted for the Little, Brown UEA writer's prize in 2019. Judi is also a working actor, and also runs her own theatre company, Broad Horizons, specialising in commissioning new plays recovering and retelling women's stories. She says since Joffe Books offered to publish her novel, she now has the writing bug, who knows how many more there will be.'
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