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Two paramedics respond to a car crash that mystifies them. The man in the car isn't badly hurt, but he's terrified and can barely be persuaded to unlock his car door to be examined. Bystanders tell them he seemed to drive his car into a pole deliberately. Luckily, the nearest hospital has a good psych unit. They'll know how to care for a troubled man who says someone is watching him, who tells them that just by talking to him they're in danger, too, from a person he's too scared to name.
US
At the end of their long shift, a final call comes through: a body needs to be extracted from under a train. Someone fell or jumped in front of it just as smoke filled the platform and a panic was on. They're startled to see that the dead man is their terrified psych patient. Could it be that somebody actually was planning to harm him?
Fortunately, detective Ella Marconi is on the case. She's not as willing as her cost-conscious boss to assume the death was a suicide. CCTV footage shows a man who appeared to be following the victim before the crowd on the platform panicked. And who set off the smoke bomb that caused the platform to be evacuated? She's even more convinced that this isn't a simple suicide when, shortly after they visit the victim's office to ask questions, his boss tries to hang himself in his office. Something's going on, and Ella will get to the bottom of it.
Though this is the sixth book in Katherine Howell's series featuring Ella Marconi, it's the first to be published in the US. Though the mystery provides a complex puzzle, there is also a focus on the characters' lives, with the two paramedics having particularly vivid storylines that includes a hair-raising rescue operation. Howell herself worked as a paramedic for many years and her expertise provides a great sense of authenticity without it ever becoming an intrusive data-dump.
One disappointment for armchair travelers: Howell's work doesn't exhibit vivid sense of place formed through landscape and vernacular language found in the work of Peter Temple, Gary Disher, or Adrian Hyland. Her Sydney could be any large city in North America or Britain. But her storytelling skills have twice earned her the Davitt award and WEB OF DECEIT was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly award. This series with a paramedic twist will please fans of police procedurals who enjoy following the professional exploits of a character with a knack for detection and a compulsion to find the truth.
§ Barbara Fister is an academic librarian, columnist, and author of the Anni Koskinen mystery series.
Reviewed by Barbara Fister, December 2015
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