William Shaw’s Salt Lane is the first in the Alexandra Cupidi series, but the name and the locale, Dungeness, Kent, rang a bell. Cupidi appeared in The Birdwatcher, and since Shaw knows better than to waste a good character (the Breen and Tozer series), it’s not too surprising that divorced, single parent Cupidi is back.

In Salt Lane, Sergeant Cupidi begins to investigate the murder of a middle-aged woman fished out from a marsh. Even the coroner is stumped when it comes to cause of death, but as the days pass, the case becomes more complex. When Cupidi finally learns the woman’s identity, she makes the drive to London to break the news to her son, Julian. But this is when things become even murkier; Julian was adopted at age 2. His mother, absent for decades, was a heroin addict, and she turned up on his doorstep right around the time the murder victim was fished from the marsh. So who is the imposter? The worn out heroin addict who apologized to Julian and then disappeared or the dead woman fished from the marsh?


As Cupidi investigates, a second body is found. This is the particularly heinous murder of an illegal alien. Why was he herded into a manure slurry tank ? Are the two murders connected?

In The Birdwatcher, Cupidi ‘lost’ her first partner. For this book, she’s teamed with a younger woman, Constable Jill Ferriter. While Cupidi does not have the most winning personality, Ferriter still has the enthusiasm and naivete of youth, and the two women make a good team–although it takes a while for Jill to crack Cupidi’s defenses.

In Salt Lane, a tightly written atmospheric police procedural, Cupidi finds that she must dig back into the alternative culture of the 80s. At the same time, she also faces the impenetrable world of illegal employment. It’s a gray world which exists just under the surface, and illegals, who are “never anywhere for very long,” don’t want to talk to the police.

The novel is marred by two coincidences, but in spite of that, this is a highly readable novel, which is driven by the murder investigations. I really liked the location, and the author capitalizes on the area when it comes to atmosphere, idiosyncrasy of locals and method of murder.

Cupidi found the owner of the breaker’s yard in the lot behind the office. He was wearing swimming trunks and dark glasses. A man in his fifties, greying hair swept back across his head, sitting on a plastic chair next to a swimming pool with a can of lager in his hand.

The pool was surrounded by old tyres and rusting gas cylinders.

“Hard day at the office?”

His leathery tan suggested he was out here most days during the summer. He fancied himself; worked out a bit. His stomach was flat for man his age, his arms muscular.

“Work, work, work,” he answered, smiling. “What about a dip?”

Cupidi makes for an interesting series character and I enjoyed the inclusion of her mother as that made some of the puzzle pieces fit. As always with a series character, we get the case (or cases) at hand plus personal life. On the personal side, Cupidi has a problematic relationship with her teenage daughter, and work demands always take precedence. Cupidi transferred to this rural area after she ended an affair with a married officer in a different department. Cupidi watches Ferriter’s interest in another Constable and knows how these things can take a sour turn.

Seriously, these characters need to take their friggin’ cell phones with them for goodness sake. Plus Cupidi is going to have a short career if she keeps putting herself (and her partner) into these risky situations. I’m not a member of the police but even I can see that the risks Cupidi takes are over-the-top. And while I’m at it, Julian’s wife, Lulu is portrayed as somewhat of a nasty cow because she’s suspicious and unfriendly when a woman claiming to be Julian’s mother shows up out of the blue. My sympathies are with Julian’s wife. I wouldn’t want a smelly heroin addict moving in my home and hovering around my toddler. Call me heartless but just because someone gave birth to you doesn’t give them automatic rights–especially if they abandoned you and decided, decades later, to pop in and see how you’re doing.

While I guessed the perp, the novel kept my interest right up to the end, and if you read the review, it’s easy to see I felt involved with the characters here.

Now: just a couple of non-review thoughts I’m going to add here. Personal lives are personal lives, and while I understand work-place behaviour/ethics and potential sexual harassment suits, it seems a bit intrusive for ‘the Practice Support Team’ to question Cupidi as to whether or not she’s having an affair with a married officer in a different department. Since dickhead lover boy is in a different department, I’d file that under Cupidi’s PRIVATE life, but that’s me. Then at one point DI McAdam (Cupidi’s boss) stands to “lose his job, his pension, his reputation, everything,” under an IPCC investigation. That seems harsh when we are talking about a split second judgement call under pressure.

review copy

Wow, how I love that I discovered this series. Shaw's detective sergeant Alexandra Cupidi is a memorable character in detective fiction. As she juggles her home life, a sullen teenage daughter, her aging mother, and country life, Cupidi must find the killer of a woman found floating in a nearby marsh. This sequel to Shaw's The Birdwatcher is ever bit as good. The setting of southern England plays just as an important part in the novel, and Shaw deftly portrays life in the southern community to a tee. I can't wait to see what he has next in store for the detective. Would recommend to my customers who enjoy Tana French and Denise Mina.

William Shaw set his terrific Kings of London crime trilogy in the 1960s, and in Salt Lane (Little Brown, digital galley), Det. Sgt. Alexandra Cupidi links her modern-day murder case in Kent to the 1980s peace protests. Opioid addiction, the immigrant crisis and homelessness also figure in the nifty plot, and prickly outsider Cupidi, introduced in last year's The Birdwatcher, makes for an interesting protagonist.

from On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

If Alex Cupidi thought life working as a detective in Serious Crimes in rural Kent would be simple compared to working for the Met in London, this summer is proving her wrong. She has two complex cases on her hands. First, the body of a woman found in a watery ditch has to be identified and the reason for her death determined - difficult to do since it's been in the water for weeks. Using information gathered from dental records, she and her callow young assistant, Constable Ferriter, go to London to notify the family. The woman's son, who'd been given up for adoption at an early age, is crushed to find his mother is dead. Why, she'd only just entered his life the day before, appearing without notice at their front door, a filthy, confused homeless woman. Either the woman who'd claimed to be his mother was a fraud, or the identity of the dead woman still has to be sorted out. By the time they return home, they have a second murder to investigate. This time, the body of a North African man has been found in a slurry pit, beaten brutally before being drowned in cattle waste.

In the second mystery to feature Sergeant Cupidi, the first to make her the central protagonist following her supporting role in THE BIRDWATCHER, William Shaw takes his time unwinding both mysteries, each of them complex enough to stand on their own. The story is set in a part of Kent that is low-lying, drained by a centuries-old network of ditches, home to the flocks of migrating birds that fascinate Cupidi's teenage daughter. It's not a natural home to Cupidi, though, and she has an awkward way of rubbing her colleagues the wrong way even as her daughter seems to be drifting away from her, barely talking when she arrives home late from a demanding day on the job. Concerned that the girl needs more support than she can give her, Cupidi invites her mother to stay with them, even though their relationship has never been easy. Part of the pleasure of this novel is watching the relationships of three generations of women unfold as a backdrop to two criminal investigations.

The strip of coast where Cupidi lives is not just home to migratory flocks, it's a place where rubber dinghies turn up abandoned on the beach, left behind after their cargo of immigrants, desperate to escape violence at home, have scattered. Investigating the North African's murder brings Cupidi into a tangle of conflicting attitudes. Farmers need workers to harvest their fruit, but policy makers and nativist sentiments have made England a dangerous place for undocumented refugees. In the end, this watery landscape, where the shore has retreated leaving a medieval city hidden beneath the waves, proves a fascinating setting for contemporary crimes, animated by a cast of well-developed characters. It will be interesting to see where this series goes next.

When I first began reading Salt Lane, I truly didn't know what to think. I had many guesses as to what direction Shaw was taking the book, only to be surprised later on. This is a great crime read and Shaw did a good job weaving in current issues as well.

First, I'd like to thank Netgalley, Mulholland Books, and William Shaw (the author) for allowing me to have this ARC of Salt Lane.

**Spoilers**

Sergeant Alex Cupidi is a woman who recently moves to Dungeness with her daughter, Zoe. Cupidi is assigned to work with Constable Jill Ferriter, who she seems annoyed by at first. Soon, a call comes in about a body found in the local marsh. Oddly enough, there is no definitive answer on how this woman wound up in the marsh. There are little to no marks, no signs up drowning and asphyxiation is even hard to determine. The case gets even stranger when Ferriter and Cupidi goes to her next of kin's (Julian) home. Julian, who was adopted out at the age of 2, just received a visit from his mother the night before. Only problem is, the woman in the marsh has been dead for days. Confused and bewildered, Cupidi and Ferriter wind up with more questions than answers, and Julian begins his own search...refusing to believe his mother is dead.

Soon, more bodies begin to pile up and Cupidi begins to theorize a connection between the murders. Frustrated with the case though, she always seems to be just steps behind the murderer. What is the connection? How can Julian's mother be dead in the marsh for days, but turn up to visit her son? Soon, Cupidi and Ferriter find a possible answer, which only leads them into danger. The closer Cupidi gets to an answer, the deadlier this web gets.

Salt Lane is a great crime thriller and kept a steady, tense pace. The characters were well developed and the stories behind them were interesting. With different twists and turns throughout the book, Salt Lane kept me guessing until the end.

The world is full of desperation.

Desperation seems to be the driving force that makes one feel the pinpricks of their present existence. It bears no precise name, no precise locality. It visits upon the strong and the weak. It's the causal factor in being misguided, misinformed, and misjudging of the stranger who travels a far different road.

Detective Sergeant Alex Cupidi still feels the uneasiness of her decision to leave the London Met Police and take on a new assignment with the Kent Police. Funny thing. Choosing to become a police nomad came upon her as she desired to leave her past life in the rearview mirror. A questionable relationship with her married senior officer, David Colquhoun, left her no choice but to make tracks in a different direction with her sixteen year old daughter, Zoe.

That same desperation pits mother and daughter in quite a stand-off as each tries to find a new identity and a new existence. Zoe takes to the shore with her love of birdwatching. So much time as a solo figure out in the wind and the rain. Alex faces long hours committed to a profession that doesn't leave her much time to heal old wounds and bandage new ones.

When the body of an older woman is found in ditch water off Salt Lane, Alex is called to the crime scene. It's not too far from the cabin that Alex shares with Zoe. There is uncertainty of the identity of the female who appears to have been homeless. Even though the identity has been ID'd by a local dentist, Alex is not too sure. Soon another body is found in a tank on Horse Bones Farm. He appears to be an immigrant with no chance of ID. Are these bodies connected in any way?

William Shaw tells a tale like no other. I discovered his stellar writing in The Birdwatch which is one of my favorites of 2017. It is in The Birdwatcher that we first come across Alex and Zoe. (Salt Lane reads as a complete standalone.) Shaw takes us on a journey of the frailty of human nature and the deeply buried secrets we hover over within our lifetimes. He brings in the timetable of the past awash with the current challenges of today's world. There's an emphasis that nothing exists in pure black and white or solid cut and dry anymore. The world has changed drastically and the puzzle pieces take on the curves and edges of a different hue. A new mindset for a new world.

Salt Lane is wonderfully written with characters that reflect humanity for the good, the bad, and the indifferent. Crime has existed since Cain and Abel. It's not going to change any time soon. It is my hope that you will have an opportunity to pick up The Birdwatcher. Both are literary treasures for sure.

I received a copy of Salt Lane through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Mulholland Books (Quercus) and to the talented William Shaw for the opportunity.

I can hear your cries of horror from here. Kestrel is reviewing another mystery- time to gird your loins and read yet another scathing review. Except. EXCEPT.

I really, REALLY liked Salt Lane, written by William Shaw, previously known for his mystery The Birdwatcher.

When police sergeant Alexandra Cupidi moves from London to more rural Kent, she’s expecting a slower pace of life. Surrounded by miles of marshland, she wants to fix her relationship with her daughter, all too aware of the mistakes her own mother made in raising her. Then the first body appears, soaked in water- a woman who seems to have mysteriously re-surfaced after years of being off the radar.

The idea of motherhood and the relationships between women are very much the central theme of this novel. Cupidi’s teenage daughter is a mystery to her, and her mother is only a little more well-known. As the bodies pile up, all seemingly connected in a way she can’t quite grasp, she realizes that her own ideas of where she stands in relationship to the other women in her life is formed from misconceptions and faulty memories.

Interwoven throughout this is timely commentary on the refugee crisis that much of Europe faces. Characters have various degrees of sympathy, yet Shaw manages to come across as someone who understands there is no easy answer and that the system as it stands simply will not suffice. This is a novel without easy answers- though the ultimate mystery is solved, it’s not tied up neatly, and that’s simply how life goes sometimes. There’s a great deal of work still left in Cupidi’s life, and in the broader political implications as a whole, but what Shaw offers is a hint of hope that strikes me as the most ultimately realistic option that could have occurred, and one I felt grateful for.

Difficult to put down, Salt Lane’s evocative marshes make for the perfect read any time of the year. Thank you so much to NetGalley and to Mulholland Books for the review copy.

Jen Mullen's review Jun 23, 2018 · edit
it was amazing

Last year I read Shaw's The Bird Watcher and enjoyed it for several reasons: the bleak Dungeness setting on the Kent coast, the distinctive characters, the depth of plot. Salt Lane is also set in Dungeness and DS Alexandra Cupidi continues her struggles to balance work and home life.

Alex isn't an immediately likable character, but she takes the lead role in this latest book, and she grows on you. Often tactless, she says what she think often without considering the way her words could be received. She's headstrong and her impulsive nature can make situations more difficult...and dangerous.

An excellent crime novel that tackles some of the current problems that society faces and blends characterization and atmosphere in a first-rate plot. Two separate cases evolve and intertwine creating a suspenseful and thought-provoking whodunnit...and why.

Alex's partnership with Constable Jill Ferriter is developing into an appealing alliance and her relationship with her mother and her daughter also holds more possibilites.

Whenever a second novel in a series appears, I wonder if it will hold up to the first--in this case, it does more than that. Salt Lane gives promise to more stimulating additions to the series.

NetGalley/Mulholland Books
Crime/Detective Fiction. June 26, 2018. Print length: 464 pages.