There can never be too many British police procedurals, in my opinion – even though I only really like a few of them. Graham H. Miller’s The List is the first in a series starring Jonah Greene, a detective in South Wales (not New South Wales in Australia, but the original place).

Jonah has just returned from an enforced break from the job, during which he’s been seeing a counselor. He “froze” during a police raid, resulting in injury to another officer. He thinks he’s ready to go to work again, but he’s not welcome with the other detectives. His boss assigns him to a job in the coroner’s office. Basically it’s desk work – he’s just supposed to see that the forms are filled out and the proper people notified.

But the very first corpse he deals with challenges him. It’s a homeless man who froze to death. There are suspicious details – why was the body found in an area where the homeless rarely go? What happened to the warm coat and sleeping bag he was known to have? And how did he come by two bottles of expensive whisky?

Another homeless man comes to see Jonah. He hands him a list of names the dead man left with him, saying the dead man told him that if anything happened to him, he should get that list to the police. They’d know what to do with it.

Jonah has no idea what to do with it.

But Jonah is a little OCD (one of his problems). Although he’s ordered to move on to the next case, he insists on asking questions on his own time. Which alarms certain influential people…

The List wasn’t bad as a novel. I had some trouble reading it, but I have a feeling that’s because it was a little close to home for me. Some of Jonah’s psychological problems are similar to mine; it was uncomfortable.

But my main problem with the story was that (this isn’t a spoiler; it’s fairly obvious early on in the story) it centered on an elaborate conspiracy lasting over many years. I am very suspicious of conspiracy stories. A secret is hard to keep in this world. And this conspiracy seemed to me improbable on the face of it.

Still, the book wasn’t bad. You might like it better than I did.