As a crime-fighting vehicle, the high-seated, silver Ford C-Max scored low on stealth. But its array of adjustable coffee cup holders still made it the most popular CID choice on nights. Brook wasn’t sure if the person who ordered it for the fleet knew nothing about policing or everything.

DC Brook Deelman is a competent, conscientious police detective on the London force, his career hindered by a drinking problem. He and his partner are called to the scene of a death in a cemetery – an old man, apparently drunk, has fallen against a tombstone and broken his neck, his hand on a bottle of cheap whisky. It looks Non-Suspicious, but Brook has doubts. The man appears too well-dressed to be a falling-down alcoholic. When he learns that the deceased was a decorated WW2 veteran, a prison camp survivor, it seems tragic. But then he meets a homeless man who saw the whole thing – the victim wasn’t drunk at all, according to the witness, and he put up a creditable fight for his life. And the whisky bottle was planted as stage dressing by the killer.

Brook gets no support – in fact he gets pushback – from his superiors when he wants to look further into the man’s story. But that doesn’t stop him. He starts piecing together the history of a man who lived with surprisingly few personal connections – only a war buddy in a rest home (who is soon murdered in his own turn) and a mysterious correspondent who occasionally sent Christmas cards from Australia containing a cryptic message.

I liked this book very much indeed. It was an original mystery, and author Ed Church has achieved originality in the right way – through vivid characterization and very tight plotting. I mean, extremely tight. This is one of those stories that ties all its loose ends up neatly, and they all come together in a gratifying way – with a couple really neat surprises.

Non-Suspicious came equipped with a lot of moral ambiguity, but it was the good kind. I appreciate the good kind. The bad kind is when the author shows us all kinds of sociopathic behavior and then explains that we’re all just naked apes, and it’s stupid to worry about right and wrong. The good kind – as in this book – is when the characters wrestle with right and wrong, and have to confront their mutual failings to do what they ought.

I liked Non-Suspicious a whole lot. I’m looking forward to reading more books in the series and spending time with Brook Deelman, a positive masculine character you can root for.