{"id":19667,"date":"2024-05-31T19:46:14","date_gmt":"2024-05-31T23:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19667"},"modified":"2024-05-31T19:46:14","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T23:46:14","slug":"the-missing-man-by-david-carter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19667","title":{"rendered":"‘The Missing Man,’ by David Carter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sometimes, especially in English crime fiction, <\/strong>your run across what I\u2019m inclined to call a \u201cPolice Cozy.\u201d It\u2019s a story about cops, but low on the action and violence. That kind of story suits me very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author David Carter is producing a series about Chester (England) detective Walter Darriteau. He works in a sex-balanced headquarters (they\u2019re always sex-balanced these days, at least in fiction), and cooperates well with his colleagues. His partner, Karen, is an attractive blonde, but they both have outside romantic relationships. The Missing Man<\/a><\/em> (one of the least charismatic book titles I\u2019ve ever come across) is a novella featuring the regular characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A middle-aged woman calls the police and informs them, matter-of-factly, that she wants to confess to a murder. Nearly 25 years ago, she says, she killed her philandering husband. Now she wants to come clean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walter and Karen go to her home to interview her, and she tells them she didn’t actually commit the murder herself. She hired a couple criminals to do the job. She doesn\u2019t in fact have any evidence of a crime. The perpetrators are dead, and even the purported burial site is under a concrete overpass (called a \u201cflyover\u201d in England), so it would be difficult to dig up. But her husband disappeared and hasn\u2019t been heard from since, so she\u2019s confident he\u2019s dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walter\u2019s and Karen\u2019s bizarre job is to try to ferret out any evidence or witnesses that might still be around after a quarter of a century. In time all will be revealed \u2013 and I have to admit it was a surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The writing in The Missing Ma<\/em>n was good. I enjoyed the story. Based on this short sample, the series appears worth checking out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, especially in English crime fiction, your run across what I\u2019m inclined to call a \u201cPolice Cozy.\u201d It\u2019s a story about cops, but low on the action and violence. That kind of story suits me very well. Author David Carter is producing a series about Chester (England) detective Walter Darriteau. He works in a sex-balanced … Continue reading ‘The Missing Man,’ by David Carter<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[5214,5216,5215],"class_list":["post-19667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-david-carter","tag-the-missing-man","tag-walter-darriteau"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19667"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19669,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19667\/revisions\/19669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}