Body on the Shore by Diane M. Dickson

I jumped at the chance to read crime fiction set in my favourite city, Liverpool. I’m half Liverpudlian and half Lincolnshire Yellow Belly. It’s my mum’s home city and now it’s where my step-daughter lives while she’s at university. One of the first things I took my husband and step-daughters to see was Antony Gormley’s Another Place on Crosby Beach. 100 Iron Men stare out to sea, some submerge and reappear as the tide turns and I’ve always found them eerie but moving at the same time. Here they’re the backdrop to a body being found by a dog-walker (it’s always dog walkers bless them). The body is wrapped in a bin bag, caught on one of the sculptures, else they might never have found her. The author has really captured the other-worldly feel of the place and it’s bleakness on a cold day, especially as a place to end up discarded like waste. This is DI Jordan Carr’s new case and he’s joined by a new DC, Terry Venn, who just makes it through his first post-mortem without disgracing himself. To be honest I had to swallow a couple of times as the author described peeling the face down! 

The victim is a young woman by the name of Beatrice Sharp, a secretary for a printing company. She comes from Northumberland and moved to Liverpool quite recently so Jordan and his team need to understand why she’d made such a huge life change and how she’s ended up with such a terrible end, killed by blows from a hammer. The characters are slightly different from a lot of detective fiction where the main character is often old, washed up, and exhausted, with marriage or drink problems on the side. Jordan is stretched and he does work late, but his wife Penny is supportive and understanding about the pressures of his job. They have a baby boy called Harry, who Jordan absolutely dotes on. He stops and watches his son’s bedroom routine on FaceTime if he’s stuck at work and can’t be there. In his working life he comes across as thorough and by the book, keeping the over exuberant and frustrated DC Venn in check when he wants to jump the gun. 

As for the setting, I don’t think you can beat Liverpool because it ranges from the tourist trail and glitzy hotels of the city centre, to the industrial Baltic Quarter and the Wirral just a tunnel away, not to mention the poorer areas – I remember Toxteth in the 1980s. The police station itself is beautifully non-descript, serves absolutely shocking coffee and often gets buried under late night takeaway containers. There are no glass boards and panoramic views here. We concentrate mostly on the case and the author sets the scene by starting with the victim. Her final moments will stay with you as the story unfolds, reminding us that this isn’t just about twists and turns and tension. This is about a young woman’s life being taken away. There’s also a narrative from a character called Ben, cleaning his van and  lamenting over the sheer amount of blood. Having watched forensic programmes he’s aware he might have to torch the van because no matter how vigorously he cleans, will it really be spotless? He’d hoped just to scare her off, but it went too far. He’s also blackmailing someone, considering asking for more money and leaving his victim to stress a while. What is his connection to Beatrice and who is he blackmailing? 

The case is relatively speedy, despite it’s complexity and is very tense in parts with police chases, more victims and one very agitated pregnant woman. It was a really quick read for me, because it was such a great story that shows our past can and often does catch up with us. I really did enjoy Terry Venn on his first case. He’s quite the character and could just have easily turned out to be an absolute scally. Luckily, he’s more ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’, slipping into Scouse slang when the conversation demands, great for witnesses who are reluctant to talk. I’d happily read the rest of DI Carr’s cases. I hadn’t realised at first that this is just one of his many adventures, so I’m really going to enjoy seeing his character develop from book one. This reads well as a stand alone novel and I definitely recommend this to other readers who enjoy crime fiction.