‘The shoreline is the perfect metaphor. It shifts moment by moment, wave by wave, grain by grain. People used to ask why I was always photographing the same places but I never was. Living here, I’ve seen more sunrises than most people do in their whole lives but I’ve never seen two the same.’

D. C. Smith, retired detective from the police force in the fictional city of Kings Lake, Norfolk, is enjoying his quiet retirement on the coast, living with his partner Jo, a true crime writer, and their dog. But he’s allowed himself to be recruited by the private investigation firm of Diver and Diver. However, he’s in a position to turn down most of the cases they offer. Now, though, in The Camera Man, they’ve got something that piques his interest.

Gerald Fitch had been the owner of a struggling marine equipment business. One day five years ago he disappeared, leaving an estranged daughter and his second wife, generally believed to be a gold digger. Now the gold digger wants him declared dead so she can liquidate his property. But an insurance company underwrote a large policy on Gerald’s life, and they want Diver and Diver to look for proof of death – or life – before they pay out.

Smith agrees to look into it, and encounters a rather sad story about a man not really cut out for business who tried his best to be responsible but got out of his depth. Did he kill himself? Did he run away to a new life? Or – and this looks increasingly likely when Smith learns who the wife’s family is (they are “well known to the police” as they say over there) – was he murdered?

The D.C. Smith books are low-key, atmospheric and cerebral. Character is always at the heart of the story, and it’s Smith’s broad and humane sympathy that serves him as his best investigative tool. It’s a challenge poking into people’s lives without the authority of the law at his back, but that just makes it more interesting.

I profoundly enjoy all the D. C. Smith mysteries. Author Peter Grainger has branched out with other books about the younger detectives Smith trained as they carry on at Kings Lake, but there’s nobody like Smith for this reader. The Camera Man is a fine, rewarding book and I recommend it highly.