{short description of image}

Perfectly Dead

Iain McDowall

Piatkus, £5.99 PB

Piatkus, £18.99 HB

Rel Dec 2003

Reviewed by L.J. Hurst

This is Crowby. Forget "wherever there's a cottage small, beside a field of grain." Think instead of a council block at the far end of a sink estate. Think of the relief you feel that you're near the bus stop, even if it is going to take two changes to get your daughters to their good school in the morning. For the duration of those wretched journeys you have some intimation and some hope that there is a way out, if not for you, then at least for the kids. And that's good, because when you get back your flat has been torched and your lover's body lying in the ash will be found to have been tortured before he died. And you never even knew that he was a drug dealer on the side

PERFECTLY DEAD is Iain McDowall's third Crowby novel, and it is his best so far. It has taken me a little while to realise that these books are crime novels, not police procedurals (though the blurbs continue to suggest otherwise) - everything revolves around Chief Inspector Jocobsen and his team, but like a small axle in a big wheel, his work does not occupy most of the space here. Instead McDowall concentrates on the other characters - Sheryl Holmes the mother; the Adams family, where Sheryl's daughter stays; and the petty villains, Dave and Florida Boy. There is a lot already hidden in that short list of names - not least that Dave and Florida Boy are on the run because they did the torture and killing. And hidden in that list, too, is McDowall's big kicker - the events that destroy a family - and it does not happen until nearly half way through. It is there that the plot changes - that we realise that while we have been in the heads of all these characters we have learned almost nothing about them. It is not a skill that every crime writer masters, but it works incredibly here, and in fact McDowall manages to get another surprising reversal in before the end. And I do not mean the denouement.

It is there on the cover - a ‘perfect family' is killed in one night. Something I don't remember occurring in A STUDY IN DEATH or MAKING A KILLING (the first two Crowby books) is the attention paid to the forensic matters. While Jacobsen is not particularly interested in forensic psychology (in fact, his own understanding of other people leaves a lot to be desired) McDowall makes the reader feel that he does not have the scientific background he needs to understand, and then allows an expert to come along and supply it, giving a reader like me an intense feeling of satisfaction. At his worst, McDowall learned something from the low-lifes he writes about: he is like some pimping dealer getting his customers hooked on little tastes so that they demand the big fix. And how good that fix of info feels when it comes! So, in this case, it is the detailed psychology of a ‘family annihilator' - detail ghastly and hypnotic at the same time.

I do have one small complaint - everything is wrapped up too quickly, and too stagily - a stylistic trait of the other books, too. However, at the speed and intensity of PERFECTLY DEAD, the book is over before there is time to notice that. And hence, too, this recommendation.