Cover Image: Burn the Evidence

Burn the Evidence

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Member Reviews

3.5 Stars

BURN OF EVIDENCE sees the return of DS Solomon Gray in this second of a series. It starts with the three bodies that wash up on the beach. One was drowned, one was stabbed and the other is the son of a very prominent businessman.

Regan Armitage had quite a reputation .. the spoiled son of a very rich man, he felt entitled to all sorts of things, especially women. Even though drugs were found in his body, most people who knew of him swear the boy never took drugs.

So what was he doing with the other dead men and why are they all dead?

Gray's investigation leads him to a series of crimes, one being an arson fire that killed a family. And while this investigation is underway, Gray gets a tip on the whereabouts of his missing son.

The story takes the reader from the here and now to back to what was happening prior. Characters are well defined, especially that of Solomon Gray. Solomon is a very vivid character. With all the losses he has suffered, work is now the only thing he has .. and that makes him a very determined man, if not a likable man.

The solid writing, memorable characters, suspenseful story line make this an excellent addition to an ongoing series. Although this works okay as a stand-alone, I highly recommend reading from the beginning.

My one complaint is that the ending seemed very abrupt, with a huge cliff hanger.

Many thanks to the author / be-ebooks / Netgalley for the advance digital copy of this crime thriller. Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

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Burn the Evidence is the second in the Detective Solomon Grey series by author Keith Nixon. Like the first in this series, this is a fast read, a well-timed British police procedural with easy to like police and hard-nosed bad guys. I enjoyed getting to know better the essential personnel in this series, and found the prose colorful and interesting. Unlike the first in this series, there is no closure at the end of this novel, however. Will have to read Solomon Gray #3 to see how this one ends.

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Burn the Evidence is the second in Keith Nixon's South Coast based series featuring DS Solomon Gray.  Working with his colleagues, DS Mike Fowler and DI Yvonne Hamson, Gray is called in when three bodies wash up on the shore line near Ramsgate.  At first it looks like an attempt by immigrants to cross the channel which has gone radically wrong, but the discovery that one of the men has died from stab wounds and another is actually the son of Jake Armitage, a prominent local business man, suggests that there is more going on than mets the eye. Regan Armitage has always had a reputation for trouble and so the possibility that he has somehow been involved in smuggling immigrants into the country is not unlikely, but when the toxicology report shows him to have had ketamine in his system the search for person behind both the smuggling and the deaths widens.

At the same time as we are being brought up to date with current events another strand of the narrative takes us back ten years to a boarding house fire which resulted in several fatalities.  Despite rumours that Jake Armitage was behind the fire, the official reports indicate that it was the result of an accident.  Very early on, however, we know that that was not the case and one man is still smarting over this, the journalist William Noble, who was ruined when his paper was forced to close after he made allegations about Armitage's involvement.  These two stories come together in The Lighthouse, a refuge for the homeless, where a survivor of the fire is confronted by a survivor from the smuggling operation. Adnan Khoury has fought his way from Syria only to see his travelling companions betrayed at the last hurdle by those they had trusted to bring them into England.  The only witness to what really happened on the boat, he is now being sought both by the police and by those who need to silence him before he can tell anyone else what happened.  Attacked by two thugs who force their way into the refuge, Khoury escapes, but not before heavily pregnant Rachel, one of the Lighthouse's assistants, is injured.

Solomon Gray finds himself involved in these cases not only professionally but also personally.  He and Jake Armitage were at school together and so even though he is well aware of Regan's reputation, Gary feels obliged to go the extra mile.  However, Armitage also has other strings that he can pull within the ranks of the local police: strings that bind not through the ties of friendship but through the more murky connections of corruption.  Gradually, the reasons why the fire was labelled an accident become chillingly apparent.

Running through the novel is the theme of parents who, for various reasons, have been separated from their children. Khoury has left his wife and sick child behind in Syria, members of the family caught up in the fire have been estranged and there is a background of domestic upheaval to Gray's story.  And this is where, for me, this novel falters.  I picked it up for review because it was recommended by a friend who is actually much more heavily involved in the world of crime fiction than I am.  I wondered about reading the first book in the series first but because time has been short this month decided against it.  That has proved to be both a blessing and a curse, a blessing because I have been able to judge how well Burn the Evidence works in its own right and a curse because actually it doesn't.  There is clearly something amiss with Gray's family life.  What I have been able to pick up is that his son Tom is missing and has been for some considerable time.  I think he was last seen when he was six and the possibility that he was abducted is floating around.  It is also apparent that Solomon is estranged from his daughter, but I have no idea why that might be, what her name is or how old she is.  From half a sentence I gather that his wife is dead.  I assume that all this was explained in the first novel and I know how difficult it is to get the balance right in respect of including such information in subsequent books, but it is a balance Nixon fails to find.  As a result I felt that I was being locked out of a lot of what made Gray the person he is.  Couple this with the fact that in general character development gave way to plot and I found it very difficult to feel that I had any understanding of the main players let alone be in a position to empathise with them.  The story runs along nicely but for me it lacks the texture and depth that would have bought it to life.  If I find myself with a spare afternoon I might go back and read the first book and see if that helps to bring the series to life, but if not then I'm not sure that I shall be looking out for the third.

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