Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Softly Calls the Devil by Christopher Blake

  

Softly Calls the Devil (Echo, November 2025) by Christopher Blake is the second book about New Zealand cop Matt Buchanan. The first book was shortlisted for the Best First and the Best Novel of the 2018 Ngaio Marsh awards.

Here Matt is happier in his new job, an ostensible demotion from his high-powered Criminal Investigation Bureau role to the rural community of Haast, where he is doing routine small-town policing. After a year he’s settled in to the slower pace of life and has grown to like the people of the area. Breaking up the intermittent teenage party and warning the local pothead about his marijuana crop and navigating the occasional traffic snafu is right up his alley these days.

Matt is good friends with his predecessor Gus, who retired when Matt took over the job but stayed in the area. Over a beer or two Gus tells Matt that he’s been looking into an old case of murder-suicide that wasn’t what it seemed, and he wanted to tell Matt about it some time. A day later Gus is found shot in the head. No chance of a hunting accident. Matt had to wonder if Gus was killed because of what he had learned about the old case. And just who heard Gus tell Matt he wanted to hand off his research to him.

The murder investigation was the province of the CIB and therefore out of Matt’s jurisdiction but nothing kept him from looking at that old case, an especially ugly story of a father killing his daughter and wife and then killing himself, to try to find the new information that Gus had uncovered. It led him to a forgotten commune and to an older gang, both of which had ties to some of the present-day Haast locals.

Blake is a serving police officer himself and he knows what he writes about, which gives the story more than superficial realism. He runs the Behavioural Science unit of the New Zealand Police in Wellington, see https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/new-zealand-cop-makes-stunning-killer-admission/news-story/d9aff330076fe36b13dcd1fa00ff9ff9. I particularly like that Blake has made Matt a team player who follows the rules and respects his management, who in turn appear to respect Matt. I am really tired of the lone wolf cop.

What starts out as a police procedural turns into so much more: a multi-faceted cold case, a meditation on mid-life re-invention, a scenic tour around the Haast region of the island, and a reminder that old sins can come to light long after the evildoer thinks they are buried.

A complicated and fascinating read. Highly recommended.

 

·         Publisher: ‎Echo

·         Publication date: ‎November 4, 2025

·         Language: ‎English

·         Print length: ‎278 pages 

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1786585417

 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link:  https://amzn.to/4rP613P

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025 

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

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Echo by Tracy Clark

Tracy Clark’s latest book is Echo (Thomas & Mercer, December 2024). Set in a Chicago winter, her third story about police detective Harriet Foster has dual story lines of revenge and attempts to right long-ago wrongs.

Foster doesn’t have time to take her coat off one Sunday morning, she is called to a field on the edge of the Belverton College campus, where a student lies dead. Brice Collier is the only son of the fabulously wealthy Sebastian Collier, who owned the nearby house that Brice and some of his friends shared during the scholastic year. Brice was known for his over-the-top Saturday night parties. Because of his father’s money, the college took a hands-off stance on anything affecting Brice, giving him the illusion that he could do or say anything he wanted without repercussion. This time he seems to have gotten too drunk to realize he was outdoors and died of alcohol poisoning and hypothermia. The fact that another student living in the same house died in similar circumstances 30 years previously did not escape the police.

While Foster and her new partner, a certified badass named Vera Li, try to pin down the students that were at the party, all of whom are curiously evasive about who was where when, Foster is getting anonymous phone calls. The male caller is making vague threats about revenge for past misdeeds and claims the death of her former partner is a punishment for Foster. Her recently dead partner was determined to have committed suicide, Foster believes she was killed by this anonymous caller. That the police department refused to look into the calls and Foster’s suspicions noticeably strains her relationship with her manager.

Grieving for her dead partner, Foster works relentlessly on the Collier case, finding more and more parallels between the old case and the new, while she tries to identify her anonymous caller and his motives after hours. Her new partner confronts her on the brutal pace she is undertaking and insists on helping identify the anonymous tormentor to remove the distraction from Foster’s life.  

Clark creates clear, well-defined, and credible characters. Even the background members of the Homicide group who don’t get much time on the page stand out distinctly from each other. The old school detective who antagonizes everyone but becomes an emotional basket case over his partner’s sick child is a perfect example. The cold distant Sebastian Collier and his troubleshooter Lange are two more. Vera Li is a fine invention, she and Foster make a powerhouse of a team. I look forward to seeing more of her. As always in Clark’s books, the city of Chicago is a powerful secondary character.

An inventive use of the revenge motive, a crisp narrative, and fine characters. This book made the Washington Post list of best 2024 mysteries for a good reason. Recommended.

 

·         Publisher: Thomas & Mercer (December 3, 2024)

·         Language: ‎English

·         Paperback: ‎364 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1662517327

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1662517327

 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3ZsDMf1 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2024 

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

Beneath the Stains of Time: Echo (2010) by Jack McDevitt

Beneath the Stains of Time: Echo (2010) by Jack McDevitt: Jack McDevitt is an American science-fiction writer specialized in xenoarcheaology, history of the future and the countless mysteries hidden...