Naked Flames

August 1, 2018
The always-reliable Ison produces another winner in his engaging Brock and Poole series. After a woman's body is found in Richmond Park outside London, the two cops are called to the scene, where they learn the victim has been strangled and?bizarrely?has had her bra removed. Hoping that the strange modus operandi will help them find the killer quickly, Brock and Poole are dismayed but not entirely shocked when a second victim is found a few days later. After a well-detailed investigation, Brook and Poole find that one sad event in a man's life pushed him over the edge. A realistic look at the challenges of modern-day policing, bolstered by sardonic British humor and a twisty plot.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

August 5, 2019
In British author Ison’s diverting 17th Brock and Poole mystery (after 2018’s Deadlock), curmudgeonly yet likable Det. Chief Insp. Harry Brock, of the Homicide and Major Crime Command West, and his team, including his clever sidekick, Det. Sgt. David Poole, investigate the suspicious death of a nudist, Robert Sharp, in a fire at a naturist club near Harrow. The fire chief at the scene tells Brock that the evidence suggests that the victim was dead before the fire started. Not surprisingly, Sharp turns out to have been a con man and a philandering husband, who has left a meandering trail of broken hearts and angry, disillusioned women across Britain. Could one of them have wanted him dead? Meanwhile, Brock takes one tiny step closer to the 21st century when he buys a book called Computers for Seniors for Dummies so he can understand the computer lingo his colleagues use. A fine ensemble cast and some amusing dialogue lift this reassuringly anodyne offering. Fans of sweetly old-fashioned police procedurals will be rewarded. Agent: Bill Hamilton, A.M. Heath (U.K.).

September 1, 2019
DCI Harry Brock and his loyal wingman, DS Dave Poole, return in one of their more unusual cases. Harry is enjoying some rare leisure time with his new lady friend when he receives an urgent call from police headquarters asking him to check out a suspicious death at a nudist camp. When he arrives, he finds a man's badly burned body in one of the camp chalets. The staff identify the victim as frequent camp visitor Robert Sharp, who was shot, then set alight. As Harry and his team investigate, they find that Sharp was a con artist who had many enemies?mostly women he'd loved and left, taking their money with him. As the investigation proceeds, Brock and Poole find double-crosses and even a drug-running scheme involving Sharp and his latest girlfriend. But every lead results in a dead end, and every potential suspect turns out to be innocent. Cleverly plotted, with wry wit, a likable copper hero, and an ingenious plot, this one will keep even seasoned mystery fans off-balance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2019
DCI Harry Brock (Deadlock, 2018, etc.) investigates the death of a con man. Much as he hates being torn from the arms of his latest lover, luscious, well-heeled Lydia Maxwell, Brock finds a certain perverse pleasure in his latest case. He and his bagman, DS Dave Poole, are sent to investigate a murder at a naturist center. The Pretext Club, a punning take on the term "pre-textile," used by naturists to describe the state in which each human is born, caters to adults who prefer to relax and swim in the altogether. But Robert Sharp, whose naked, charred body was found in his chalet at the club after he was shot and set ablaze, seemed to have used naturism as a means of finding a more intimate--and lucrative--form of relaxation. After his demise, the police are besieged by a parade of women who had more than enough reason to set Sharp ablaze. Their stories are depressingly similar: They all met Sharp at one naturist club or another where he charmed them into bed, promised them marriage, borrowed tidy sums of money from them, and promptly disappeared, leaving most of them not only bereft, but pregnant. Brock, who likes his women wealthy but not gullible, is nevertheless keen to arrest Sharp's killer. He does need some help, not only from Poole, but from Aussie DI Kate Ebdon, whom he relies on to point out some of the finer points, like the fact that one of the women they interview is eight months pregnant. Patient police work solves the case, although readers may still wonder why, in the land of National Health, no one seems to use contraception. An eminently typical Ison procedural, although it may make readers queasy about public swimming pools.

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