Sadly, I was unable to download this book in time before it was archived and this I was not able to either read or review it. My apologies.

This book was a weird reading experience because I struggled with the characters and the plot but couldn't put it down.
I wanted to know what was going to happen and I was not in the mood for this faulted and problematic characters.
I had a love/hate relationship with it but I'm happy I reading because it's enthralling, atmospheric and gripping.
I want to recommend it because it's a good police procedural and I want to read the other books in this series.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

I have to admit defeat with this one. I have tried. I percervered. But...

I absolutely hate giving up on books, especially on books by authors who created my favourite characters (Frost). However, Whitethroat was more than I could achieve and less than I was expecting.

I understand that may be I do not understand a lot of things and the author is genius in creating the atmosphere of place, the setting, the environment, the colours and relationships in the 80s England. But... the book did not take me. The story did not grab me.

There are locations for British crime novels that fit certain moods. You can have rural idylls which are shattered by evil deeds - the Cotswolds, the Yorkshire Dales and the majestic Scottish Highlands all fit that bill. Then you have the criminals hiding behind the bright lights of cities like London, Glasgow, and Manchester. James Henry has chosen a rather more understated milieu for his Nick Lowry police novels - Essex, and in particular, the garrison town of Colchester.


Essex has become something of a trigger word in recent years, conjuring up images such as lavish mansions owned by London gangsters and dumb bottle-blondes with their perma-tanned, medallioned boyfriends. James Henry, however, takes us back forty years to the 1980s. DI Nick Lowry and his boss, Chief Superintendent Sparks, inhabit a police HQ which leaks, has rotten floorboards, and is maybe only months away from the demolishers' wrecking ball. Sparks contemplates his desk:


"He studied the wooden surface of his desk. Countless semicircles, rings from years of mugs, cups, scotch glasses, placed carelessly and staining the untreated grain. The there were more pronounced wounds and scars: cigarette burns, knife scores, unusual marks – traces of events only the man behind the desk could read."

Since Roman times, the history of Colchester has been inextricably intertwined with that of soldiering, and it is the death of a young 'squaddie' (an unranked private soldier) that Lowry investigates. Improbably, it seems that the dead man was shot in a Victorian-style duel, complete with gentlemanly observance and the presence of Seconds. With the help of his friend Captain James Oldham, of the Military Police, Lowry discovers that the two men had been fighting over a woman. But who was the other duellist, and who was the woman?


The plot goes this way and that, but this is a book that is always about the quality of the prose. Lowry has a young subordinate called Kenton, who has been on leave since being traumatised by the death of a young girl. Kenton is clever, well-educated, but enjoys his stimulants. In pursuit of the more legal kind, he observes pub life:

"..it was different being here as a punter. You saw the place through different eyes; peaceful and inviting and shabbily familiar. Flaking paintwork, worn hardwood surfaces, the yellow, cracked ceiling; a naked aging structure smoothed by the warmth of alcohol and density of cigarette smoke."


And again:


"The first to arrive were the regulars. Men in their sixties. One, Wilf, was already in situ, perched quietly at a corner table, steadfastly drinking IPA. He would sut there until last orders, then leave as silently as he had arrived. Around midday, the bohemian set – ‘intellectual dossers’, Sparks called them – would drift in. Young men clutching tatty paperbacks. Sucking the end of biros and staring pensively into the middle distance."

Like most self-respecting fictional police detectives, Lowry's personal life is something of a wasteland. He is divorced, and his wife has poisoned their son against him. He feels that the years are taking their toll on him, but he remains compassionate:


"Lowry moved to place his arm across Sparks’s shoulders, but instead grasped the nearest arm, squeezed the firm bicep and bowed his head. He was winded by a surge of sympathy, revealing an attachment to the older man that seldom surfaced. Even now – more and more, in fact, the older he became – life caught Lowry out, introducing unsolicited emotions and concerns, age bringing with it a new sort of awareness."

The plot is the least important part of this fine novel, but it unfolds gradually. The woman whose favours are being fought over by the duellists is not a woman at all, but a fifteen year-old schoolgirl, the daughter of a local businessman. He, in turn, has unfinished business with a local enrepreneur, and business that dates back to a racial attack three decades earlier. We are in a world of simmering resentment born out of old slights, and the result? The proverbial dish that is best served cold.

Whitethroat is bleak, downbeat and mesmerising; a subtle, compassionate and beautifully written novel that is something of an elegy to a way of policing – and living - that is gone for ever. James Henry, as James Gurbutt, has also written prequels to RD Wingield’s Jack Frost series. Whitethroat is published by Riverrun and will be out in hardback on 9th July.

Whitethroat is the third book in the DI Nick Lowry series set in 1980s Essex and it is another solid police procedural thriller

Starting off with a duel and ending on a cliffhanger this is an enjoyable book that is recommended

I would like to thank Netgalley and Quercus Books for an advance copy of Whitethroat, the third novel to feature DI Nick Lowry, set in Colchester in 1983.

When a dual leaves a soldier dead in the main street it is regarded as army business but it soon overlaps into other criminal cases leaving Nick and the team to unravel a web of interconnecting relationships and dodgy deals.

I enjoyed Whitethroat which is an absorbing read that starts with one crime and widens into much more. It is clever the way the characters intersect in the present and are gradually revealed to have links in the past as well. Each of these reveals is eye opening as I didn’t see it coming and yet makes so much sense when out in the open. I was glued to the pages following the relationships and serpentine connections. It all seems very realistic. The ending is equally realistic but somehow unsatisfying with no big bow tying it all up and it ends on a cliffhanger with no explanation. At least the journey to get there is interesting and engrossing.

I didn’t get much sense of the era from the novel. I cast my mind back to my early twenties and apart from a few references to the politics of the time and a few pop records there is no sense of the cultural upheaval and all the change in the air. Apart from the lack of technology it could be set any time.

The characterisation is strong in the novel, apart, strangely, from Nick Lowry who is a bit of an enigma. He is the protagonist who has some family issues but he doesn’t make a strong impression. The problems his colleagues have are more readily apparent and identifiable.

Whitethroat is a good read that I can recommend.