The Rock (2016) by Robert Daws
GoodReads meta-data is 196 pages, rated 3.82 by 1,670 litizens.
Genre: krimi
Verdict: Rhyme and reason take a holiday in the sun.
When errant police officers from the London Metropolitan Force are sent to Siberia to avoid smelling the place up it usually means an indefinite secondment to the Orkney or Shetland Islands, but when those billets are already filled with losers by other krimi writers, the alternative is Gibraltar. Hence our heroine finds herself on the Rock.
It is by the numbers, an odd couple of police officers, he older and grumpier, she the youthful secondee who remains ambitious despite the blotted copybook, cross-cut with contemporary and historical events in such a profusion this reader got lost in the first twenty pages. There is a chase at the outset, an accidental death, another accidental death, an ostensible suicide (but we know better), a murder forty years ago, ….. [stay tuned because there is more crammed into fewer than 200 pages.] No wonder travel insurance for Gibraltar is so expensive.
The saving grace is the locale, and for that I persisted. They say see Gibraltar … before lunch and leave; it doesn’t take long.
What with all the cross-cuts, there is no narrative, but lots of whoosh of speeding motor bikes, running feet, hurtling cars which betrays the aspiration to a screenplay. Good luck on that.
Credit where it is due: the supervisor is not a cardboard character for once.
First of the series and the last for me.