The Sea Detective by Mark Douglas-Home

Title: The Sea Detective
Author: Mark Douglas-Home
Publisher: Sandstone Press Ltd
Published: May 2010
ISBN: 978 190 5207 657


Mark Douglas-Home's Facebook page




Rating 5/5 with merits (making it into my Top 5 reads this year!)




The cover on this is self explanatory, but it's got lovely colours of cyan for the waves!


I love crime fiction - and this one ticks all the right buttons for me, hence why it's made it into my Top 5 reads so far this year.  A unique (as far as I know!) crime fiction story, which is mainly about Cals family history and a police woman, Helen Jamieson, who is out to prove she can do her job while sticking it to the big guys!  There is a huge theme in this book which Cal and Jamieson work on...but I'm keeping you in suspense...it really adds to the book and characters.


Cal McGill is a detective with a very distinct difference - he works out where unidentified floating corpses began their journey.  As a long time watcher of CSI, Dexter and NCIS, this made a very refreshing change for me.  Cal is an eco warrior, plant activist (read it - you'll see what I mean!!).  One thing he is particularly bad at is relationships - he enjoys working alone, so it comes as no surprise to know he's got an ex in the wings who's been wronged.  The interweaving of her current job and Cal's personal life is interesting.  


I absolutely love the way this book is put together.  Cal diligently finds out how his grandfather ended up where he did, which is how his obsession with identifying floating corpses came from; and in the process unearths secrets long since buried and way overdue to come to light.


I couldn't put this book down till I'd finished it!  The way Basanti's story unfolds is a shocker...and kept me on the edge of my seat with what she had gone through.  


This is Mark Douglas-Homes' first novel.  I sincerely hope it won't be the last....I really hope there's more to come from Cal and Jamieson - an author to put on my one to watch list :)


Book synopsis:
Cal McGill is a detective with a difference. He's an oceanographer and sometime eco-warrior who tracks flotsam and jetsam back to their source using his knowledge of sea currents. Floating human bodies are his speciality. Two women on different missions seek him out for help. Helen Jamieson is a police officer with a grudge and an unusual case to solve - severed feet wearing trainers are washing up on Scotland's beaches. Basanti, a feral Indian teenager a long way from home, is hunting down the murderers who dumped her friend overboard and abandoned her to die. The loner McGill finds his life and liberty at risk as he also pursues a private quest, the tragedy which first provoked his interest in this macabre line of work: what really happened to his grandfather who was lost at sea?


Source - Many thanks to Sandstone Press, a copy was received in return for an honest review.