‘The Wild Swimmers by William Shaw

Published by riverrun,
23 May 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-52942-012-8 (HB)

Detective Sergeant Alexandra Cupidi, due to start back on the serious crimes unit after being away because of stress, is sent to investigate the report of a dead body on the beach at Dungeness. It‘s a young woman, later identified as one of a group of women who go wild swimming in the area.

Meanwhile a close friend and colleague of Alex’s, Detective Constable Jill Ferriter, who has never known her father, now receives a message from Stephen Dowles claiming to be that man. The trouble is he is in prison for murder and about to be released. Jill wants Alex’s advice as what to do.

Alex visits the beach where the women swim, the dead woman had been identified as Mimi Greene. Alex asks the other three swimmers about Mimi; they tell her that she was a very strong swimmer and would never have drowned. So begins a murder investigation and Alex and the team need to speak to Malcolm who was in a relationship with Mimi, but no one seems to know his surname.

Meanwhile as Alex is so busy with Mimi’s murder, she hasn’t time to investigate the man claiming to be her friend’s father. Jill therefore asks a close neighbour and friend Bill, a retired police officer, to help her. Reluctantly he agrees to find out more for her. However, little does he know what depths he is getting into.

His enquiries lead to his life being put in grave danger when he unearths evidence of past cover ups within the police force concerning drug dealing. Corruption was rife back in the early 1990’s in his area.

As Alex looks further into the death of Mimi, she also finds connections to the past, dealing with drug trafficking.

It becomes a very complicated and baffling case. Who and where is Malcolm, a person whose name keeps cropping up in connection with the murder and Bill’s enquiries? Who could possibly have killed Mimi and why?

Is Bill’s old friend and colleague from the police force as straight as he always seemed?

A really complex murder enquiry which turns into so much more, set in the wonderfully descriptive wild beauty and desolation of the coast around Dungeness.

Thoroughly recommended for readers who enjoy a very complicated case to unravel.
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Reviewer: Tricia Chappell

William Shaw was born in Newton abbot, Devon, and grew up in Nigeria and lived for sixteen years in hackney. Starting out as assistant editor of the post-punk magazine ZigZag, he has been a journalist for The Observer, The New York Times, Wired, Arena and The Face and was Amazon UK Music Journalist of the Year in 2003. He is the author of several non-fiction books including Westsiders: Stories of the Boys in the Hood, about a year spent with the young men of South Central Los Angeles, and A Superhero For Hire, a compilation of columns in the Observer Magazine. A Song from Dead Lips was the first in a series of crime fiction books set in London in 1960’s featuring DS Breen and WPC Tozer. His most recent series features DS Alexander Cupidi. He lives in Brighton.

www.williamshaw.com

Tricia Chappell. I have a great love of books and reading, especially crime and thrillers. I play the occasional game of golf (when I am not reading). My great love is cruising especially to far flung places, when there are long days at sea for plenty more reading! I am really enjoying reviewing books and have found lots of great new authors.