Backhand Smash

January 11, 2016
In Gregson’s engrossing 19th mystery featuring Det. Chief Insp. Percy Peach (after 2015’s A Necessary End), Jason Fitton, a member of the Birch Fields Tennis Club in Brunton, a suburb of Manchester, England, is strangled following the exclusive club’s summer dance. Plenty of people despised the victim, all of whom appear in engaging vignettes. Among the suspects are the board member who blamed Fitton for her husband’s illness, the club official who loathed him for his womanizing, the manager of Fitton’s legitimate business (who blamed him for starving it of funds), and the enterprising Pakistani member with an unsavory interest in underage girls. Meanwhile, Det. Sgt. Clyde Northcott, protégé of the irascible and talented Peach, has just become the club’s first black member, which causes personal and professional complications. Peach cleverly and relentlessly pursues the truth in a police procedural that seamlessly incorporates details about officers in their off-duty hours into a complex murder case.

January 1, 2016
A recently integrated tennis club is the scene of a murder. DS Clyde Northcott knew that giving in to Olive Crawshaw's increasingly importunate invitations to join the Birch Fields Tennis Club would come back to bite him in the end. The formidable Olive may have taken the club's goal of growing its numbers to heart, but dyed-in-the-wool racists like Arthur Swarbrick think that offering memberships to Asians, like suave Pakistani Younis Hafeez, is going far enough. There's no need to include Afro-Caribbeans like the towering Northcott, whom even his mentor, DCI Percy Peach (A Necessary End, 2015, etc.) calls "a hard bastard." But pretty PC Elaine Brockman's offer to help Northcott get his volley back into shape is too much to resist, and next thing he knows, he's squiring Elaine to the club's summer ball. Unfortunately, the ball ends with the discovery of the body of Jason Fitton, owner of Fitton Metals, in his parked car. Now Northcott is in the awkward position of helping Peach interrogate his fellow club members to see who might have had something against Fitton--which turns out to be just about everyone. Not only do Olive and Arthur hate him, but Hafeez stands poised to take over his criminal enterprises, while Robert Walmsley, managing director of Fitton Metals, and Walmsley's personal assistant, Anne Grice, loathe Jason for starving the company of capital. The competition to see who hated Fitton most overshadows any rivalry on Birch Fields' courts, and it's a sure bet that the final outcome of Gregson's solid procedural won't be 1-love.

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March 1, 2016

DS Clyde Northcott, a protege of DCI Percy Peach, has no desire to join the Birch Fields Tennis Club. Yet the club has decided to recruit "desirable" minorities, and Peach believes Northcott should be dragooned into joining. When a dead body turns up, will Peach and Northcott find the killer before more snooty members are murdered? Gregson's 19th installment (after A Necessary End) features the series's trademark British humor and amusing characters.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2015
The inimitable DCI Percy Peach is back in this engrossing read about murder at a tennis club. Percy's black bagman, Clyde Northcott, has been persuaded to join the upscale Birch Lane Tennis Club to show that the club has moved into the twenty-first century and embraces the racial and ethnic diversity of Brunton in Northumberland. But just days after Northcott joins Birch Lane, one of the club's board members, Jason Fitton, is murdered. Fitton, owner of a scrap-metal business, was also into less savory ventures, including betting shops, prostitution, gambling, and trafficking of children. Percy Peach knows that, however much he abhors the man, he must take every care in investigating Fitton's murder. There are plenty of potential suspects, because plenty of people had good reason to hate Fitton. But Percy is nothing if not persistent. A darkly humorous, cleverly plotted, well-written, thoroughly engaging police procedural.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)