Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Murder Unsolved by Bruce Beckham

Bruce Beckham is a well-travelled British author of fiction and nonfiction. His police procedural series with Detective Inspector Daniel Skelgill is set in England’s Lake District. It is self-published and has quite a following on Amazon and GoodReads. The eighteenth in the series, Murder Unsolved (Lucius, 2022), brings Skelgill back with his team Detective Sergeant Leyton and Detective Sergeant Jones to solve an unofficially re-opened case.

A year or so before the story opens, the bodies of brothers Jake and Boris Badduns were found in a burned-out car in an isolated part of Cumbria. They were known criminals and believed to be the victims of a gangland execution. The fingerprints of local car thief Dale Spooner were found at the crime site, which was enough to convict him and send him to prison for life. Now DI Skelgill’s cousin tells him confidentially that Spooner can prove he was elsewhere at the time of the murders. He accepted the life sentence under threats to the safety of his girlfriend and their baby. To protect them Skelgill has to investigate the case again without anyone finding out, including the officer who was in charge at the time.

Their investigation takes them to the rural area where the bodies were found, using as pretense the rash of car thefts in the region, and to the Isle of Man. There’s a helpful guide to terminology in the front of the book, which I needed to translate the local dialect used in interviews with the colorful residents which include a café owner, a sheepherder, a mechanic, and a farmer. A best-selling crime writer who had a hideaway in the village to let her write in peace also managed to get involved. For a nice change, it was not the female detective who got into trouble in the course of their inquiry and had to be rescued.

Reading this series in order is unnecessary to understanding the story line of this latest title. Apparently Skelgill has an extensive family who provide supplemental plot threads in the books. They are also useful conduits of information. In this title the family Christmas bash gave Skelgill an opportunity to do a little sleuthing under the guise of maintaining family connections at the holidays. Really good plot, some interesting characters, sound but not great writing. Descriptions of the Lakes scenery are a high point. For fans of British detective crime fiction, especially anyone looking for a new series to binge.

·         ASIN: ‎ B09J2Q4B2W

·         Publisher: ‎ Lucius; 1st edition (January 8, 2022)

·         Publication date: ‎ January 8, 2022

·         Language: ‎ English

·         File size: ‎ 3283 KB

·         Print length: ‎ 252 pages

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2022

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.