This is the sixth book featuring black policeman DI Wesley Peterson and his boss, DCI Gerry Heffernan who operate on the English Riviera known in real life as Torbay.
Kate Ellis has developed a unique formula of running her plots alongside happenings from the years gone by. Therefore, each chapter opens with letters between members of a local family in the fifteenth century and, as the book progresses, a resemblance to current events become clear.
The title refers to The Darenham Doom, a painting found in the barn of Terry Hoxworthy whose farm is on the site of a medieval village currently being excavated by archaeologist Neil Watson, an old chum of Wesley’s and a regular cast member of the series.
Aging rock star, Jonny Shellmer, is found murdered in a field near the barn and Hoxworthy’s teenage son goes missing after contacting a man on the Internet. An attempt is made on the life of Angela, who runs a New Age shop in Darenham village, a place where several celebrities live side by side with the locals. Is she the ‘Angel’ in Jonny Shellmer’s song and what terrible events in the singer’s past could have inspired the horrors that lead the two detective’s into their mist baffling case yet.
Full marks to the author for combining an easy read with a clever and complex plot. The two don’t always go together. Kate Ellis is brilliant on characterisation and the emotional and private lives of the two main characters are followed through the series. Heffernan, is in his fifties, recently widowed and a lonely man, bitter about the circumstances of his wife’s death. Will he ever find true love again. The nearly thirty Peterson, is a new father but a hint that his wife may still prefer her old boyfriend, Neil keeps the frisson going. Meanwhile, does Wesley himself have a secret, albeit, as yet, unrequited yearning for DS Rachel Tracey? These are undercurrents that make the legion of Ellis’s faithful readers wait impatiently for the next instalment of this popular crime soap.
These books are the opposite of hard boiled and the charm of rural and seaside Devon comes across strongly. Yet there is nothing twee about the writing or plotting which is as tight as anything that came out of Hollywood and is a natural for a highly photogenic television series.
One last point. At a time when several misguided writers, presumably on the
orders of their publishers are writing the crime novel equivalents of War and
Peace, A Painted Doom weighs in at 80'000 words, an ideal length for
the genre.
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Ron Ellis
Other books in the series are, An Unhallowed Grave, The Merchant House, The
Bone Garden and Funeral Boat