At Dyes Inlet, an estuary in Washington state’s Puget Sound, a woman walking her dog discovers the body of a drowned, middle-aged woman. The corpse has a crude heart carved into its back. Because the local police department is stretched thin, they call in Thomas Austin, a semi-famous former NYPD detective who has moved there in the wake of his wife’s murder. Austin agrees to help out. He is paired with a new partner, a prickly but attractive female detective recently imported from Los Angeles. So begins The Drowning at Dyes Inlet, by D. D. Black.

It’s soon apparent that this murder is identical to an old unsolved case from the 1970s. A suspect quickly appears – but unfortunately this man is the brother of the sheriff, who is running for governor and desperate to avoid a bad press. It will all build up to a final, tense hostage situation at a wedding.

Thomas Austin has one intriguing characteristic as a fictional character – he has synesthesia – the condition where people experience tastes and smells in response to visual stimuli. This was interesting, though I didn’t see that it contributed to the plot in any noticeable way. Austin himself was not a very interesting character – and in fact, none of the characters here were very interesting (to this reader). They had their quirks and eccentricities, but I didn’t recognize them as people. They didn’t talk like real people – they opened up with personal information where real people wouldn’t. The dialogue simply didn’t remind me of anything I’d ever heard. And the villain’s motivations didn’t strike me as plausible.

I got the impression that perhaps the author is on the autistic scale, and doesn’t understand personalities. Alternatively (and more positively) he might just be such a nice person that he doesn’t understand how bad people think. One way or the other, I didn’t find The Drowning at Dyes Inlet very well-written. This is the sixth book in an eight-book series, so somebody must be reading them, but I can’t recommend them.