I read and reviewed one of Peter James’ earlier Det. Supt. Roy Grace novels, Dead Simple, several years back, and gave it a middling grade.
But I unwittingly downloaded the Kindle version of another one, Dead Man’s Footsteps, recently, and enjoyed it very much. I thought the characters were better developed here, and Superintendent Grace’s (to me) regrettable interest in psychic evidence only got a passing mention.
The story involves several seemingly unconnected threads, which duly come together in the end, as the real identities of various characters are gradually revealed (with some red herrings thrown in for the fun of it). Supt. Grace is called out to a construction site in his city of Brighton, where a skeleton has been discovered in an old storm drain. Several indications lead him to believe that it might be the remains of his beloved first wife Sandy, who disappeared, as if into thin air, some years ago. Meanwhile a woman is caught in an elevator in her high rise, spending more than a day in terror, unable to send an alarm or use the emergency phone. And we flash back to the morning of September 11, 2001, as a shady Englishman in Manhattan heads for a fateful meeting in the World Trade Center.
The story is long and convoluted, but that’s more a feature than a bug; there are a lot of puzzles here for the reader to work out. And this time the characters were pretty interesting, at least to me. And the story ended with a surprise neat enough to give me a little chill.
Recommended. Cautions for language, adult themes, and a steamy sex scene.