There’s a famous curse, known well to authors, that goes with the second novel. Too often, the second novel isn’t quite as good as the first. This shouldn’t be surprising. A first novel is often the product of years of loving rewriting and polishing; the second book is often written under a deadline.

I praised Ed Church’s first Brook Deelman novel, Non-Suspicious, to the skies. The second in the series, Probably Dead, is not (in my opinion) as good. But the first book was unusually good, so Number Two is still worth reading.

Probably Dead finds London police detective Brook Deelman on a “career break,” touring his home continent of Africa. In South Africa he happens on a bar being robbed, and helps the owner stop the criminals. The grateful owner befriends him. He’s an old London cop himself, he says. He left the force after his daughter disappeared – probably dead according to investigators – after participating in a riot in the 1990s. He’s almost apologetic as he shows him his copy of the police file – could Brook look into the case, when he gets back?

The next day the bar owner is dead – likely suicide, like his daughter – and Brook heads back to the big city, feeling some kind of obligation.

His first stop is to visit an old retired cop in a recreational center. The man seems strangely secretive and hostile. As he’s driving away, Brook is stopped by a policeman, who then searches his vehicle and “finds” drugs. This could mean the end of Brook’s career, and even time in prison.

But Brook barely thinks about that. What he’s mostly thinking about is how mad he is, and how no policeman should use his power that way.

There will be consequences.

There was nothing really wrong with Probably Dead, except that it failed to match the tight plotting and surprises of the first book. Also the villain was pretty one-dimensional. There was a possible hint of politics too, but not too heavy for me to bear. I’m staying with the series for the present.

The running theme of these books seems to be some kind of cosmic balance – something like fate, or possibly even God. There’s a palpable frisson for the reader when fate is revealed. That’s fun.