‘It’s a secondment. Think of it like an exchange programme if you want. We’re sending you there in exchange for, well, for you not being here, if I’m honest.’

A new English police series with a fairly original hero. I’m up for that.

Harry Grimm, the hero of Grimm Up North, looks kind of like Frankenstein’s monster, due to scarring from an IUD explosion during his service as a paratrooper. Now he’s a detective in Bristol. He’s pretty good at it too (his face actually helps), but his superiors don’t like him, partly because of his hostile attitude, and most particularly because he never lets up on his personal search for the man who killed his mother and destroyed his family – his own father.

So his boss sends him off on a “temporary” secondment to Wensleydale in Yorkshire, an area made famous by All Creatures Great and Small. It’s a whole other world – clean air, friendly people, tiny towns, an agricultural economic base. Not much crime, to be honest, and certainly very little serious crime.

Except that the very day Harry shows up, a young girl goes missing. And not long after, a murdered body is found beside a lake.

It would be ridiculous to blame this sudden crime wave on Harry, but that doesn’t stop his Yorkshire superior from doing just that. His learning curve will be steep, but in the end he’ll unmask the killer and save a couple lives.

Grimm Up North was an enjoyable fish-out-of-water mystery. The writing was good and the characters were amusing. Cautions for the usual.