The Birdwatcher

Detective sergeant William Shaw has lived and policed the Kentish coast of England long enough to earn the respect of the locals. On his off time he enjoys birdwatching, it’s a good way to help him in the present so he doesn’t focus on his painful past. When a fellow birdwatcher and good friend is murdered, William’s past comes roaring back. As a young boy, William lived in Northern Ireland, and as a teenager, during the Troubles was accused of killing a man. No one is his current life knows of his past, except, the man who was murdered, and, it would appear, the man who killed him. Traveling back and forth between Billy’s (William’s) story in the past in Ireland, and William’s story in the present, Shaw writes a masterful story about regret and revenge

This book caught my attention from the first and did not let go! I barely stopped reading it and loved the pace, characters and setting. I liked how Shaw flipped back and forth between past and present to tell the story of William' South's father and what happened to him. I also enjoyed how he had many red herrings along the way that pointed to a more sinister reason for murder of his neighbor. I didn't guess the killer and through expected a more pat ending. This book begs for a sequel - please don't disappoint!

Exciting, and evocative this beautifully written thriller is a standalone which introduces Sergeant William South an introvert with a passion for birdwatching. Drawn into investigating the murder of his one and only friend he has a deep secret that might well help him understand how a killer thanks and acts.

The Kent coast is brilliantly brought to life and this is book that demands attention from an exceptionally gifted author.

The title was so mysterious that I had to read it. I'm not going to give anything away, you need to read this book for yourself

This fascinating novel is a bit of a departure for Shaw, who made his name with his Breen & Tozer series set at the end of the swinging 1960s in London, a time of significant social change. THE BIRDWATCHER is quieter and more patient in style and tone, echoing its main character - a community policeman living on the rugged Kent coastline. Police Sergeant William South likes the solo life, enjoys bird watching, and harbours a deadly secret from his youth. When he's drawn into a murder investigation, his past begins to bubble to the surface again. This is an intriguing book that draws you in not with high-impact action but a slower build-up of tension and character. South is a murderer himself, and know he's on the trail of one, despite his best instincts. He'd rather be watching his birds and keeping the peace than hunting a killer. An unusual and fascinating tale from a good writer.

I’m very excited to receive an early review copy of The Birdwatcher. William Shawis a great writer, I’ve loved his Breen and Tozer detective series set in 1960s London, and I’ve been looking forward to this new standalone crime novel.

As usual with a good, gripping book, I managed to read it straight through in a couple of days. The Birdwatcher follows police sergeant William South, a quiet man who’s Kent coast beat usually involves liaising with the local community rather than murder. Things are further complicated by two factors, the arrival of new detective Alexandra Cupidi, and the murder victim is William’s friend and neighbour. Then, in the first lines we discover that William has two more reasons not to want to get involved in the murder: it’s migration season (he’d rather be watching birds) and he is a murderer himself. You’ll see that this book has great potential for a compelling, complex, story, and I’m pleased to say that Shaw delivers and kept me gripped all the way through.I enjoyed the characterisation. William South is, much like the hero of Shaw’s other books, a quiet man. He likes his life on the wild, barren coast at Dungeness, and his job as Local District lead for the Kent police. He fights against getting involved in the murder even before he finds it is so close to home, and he’s unsure about the new DS who has moved down from London. Against his better judgement, South gets sucked further and further into the case, his local knowledge helping him uncover link after link that tells him the death of his neighbour and fellow birdwatcher wasn’t just a random killing.

The other character who worked well for me was Zoe Cupidi, Alexandra’s teenage daughter who is angry at being dragged away from her friends and school. South finds himself forced to play babysitter and take Zoe birdwatching. I’m not sure how many teenage girls would genuinely manage to become interested in birds, but Shaw writes persuasively!

I also enjoyed the flashbacks to South’s childhood, growing up on a Protestant estate surrounded by Catholic areas in Northern Ireland in the seventies. At first I was a little unsettled by the change of setting, but soon I grew used to this part of the book which gradually showed us how South became the man he is, and raises the question of whether his past is catching up with him.

The final part of the book I want to highlight is Dungeness itself. I love to write in Dungeness, it has a special characteristic of it’s own, a wide expanse of beach overshadowed by the power station, and I guess Shaw has spent quite some time there too. It’s the ideal setting for a murder, and I may not be able to write there in quite the same way again!

This is the first book in a new series from Shaw, and it's one that looks to have longevity! South is almost an anti-detective- he's not as brash or forward in his thinking. Rather he is slower and more methodical, an observer more than an aggressor. But is it because he has been a loner, or is it by choice? The arrival of a new female detective, who drags him into his neighbor's murder, drags him more into the world, and more into the lives of those around him. South is a hero that the reader roots for, and as he finds clues to the mystery, he becomes a character your want to stay with! I look forward to reading more books in this series!

I would like to the NetGalley, Mulholland Books, and William Shaw for the advanced digital copy in exchange for an honest review. Kent, England and birdwatcher DS William South is teamed up with DS Alexandra Cupidi to solve the rage killing of a local man. South is a by the books detective, well mannered, keeps to himself with a limited pool of friends, one who happened to be the murdered man. This is a bit different when it comes to a whodunit although I too love to watch birds, which compelled me to pick up this title. I will be happy to see a series come out of this novel.

Is this going to be a series? I want this to be the first book in a series! Mr. Shaw does an amazing job of creating engaging characters that the reader wants to continue to follow past the last page.

The Birdwatcher introduces William South, a police officer who enjoys the position of a local cop and dealing with the day to day milieu of policing a coastal town. The book has two plotlines: South’s past, growing up in Ireland and dealing with an abusive father and religious gang wars, and the present where South’s neighbor has been brutally murdered and he is dragged into the investigation. As always seems to be the case, I was more engaged with one story line that kept getting interrupted by the other one. In this case, I figured out very quickly what the flashbacks were going to reveal so I wasn’t as interested in those sections as much as I was the current scenes. While I enjoyed both storylines, Mr. Shaw shines in his character development, from his central character William South to the secondary characters, his new boss DI Cupidi and her teen daughter. If there isn’t a second book, the reader is left to wonder the fate of South and whether Zoe, the teen girl, manages to make a place for herself in the isolated town.

I had seen the description for THE BIRDWATCHER by William Shaw and it immediately intrigued me - "Police Sergeant William South has a good reason to shy away from murder investigations: he is a murderer himself." That's enough to pull me in!

This novel is set in the Kent marshlands, where William South both works and lives. South works for the police force as a detective, yet he gets anxious when he is asked to take part in a murder investigation. Not only will this interfere with his hobby as a dedicated Birder, but William is also a murderer.

When he discovers that he knows the victim - his neighbor, Bob Reyner, who would frequently join him in watching birds at the reserve close by. Why was such a gentle, soft spoken man such as Bob Reyner killed so brutally? The nature of the murder reminds William of his childhood and violent past. We find out within the first couple pages why he labels himself as a murderer.

To make matters worse, he is partnered with Alexandra Cupidi, a sergeant who just arrived from the Met to assist in the investigation. The main person of interest is someone from South's childhood - with the victim being the only connection to South's crime years ago. He must now work tirelessly to keep his personal connections to not only the past, but also to the victim, a secret.

THE BIRDWATCHER is British crime fiction to its core. I really enjoyed the bleakness of the story - the characters, the location, and the murder. Shaw did a great job developing and creating the characters. William South is a diligent and methodical man, Alexandra is vivacious and troubled as she raises her teenage daughter, Zoe, on her own. The relationships between the characters are incredibly unique.

If you're looking for a slow burn, police procedural, British crime fiction novel, then I'd highly recommend this one! I really enjoyed Shaw's writing style and I'll be looking for more from him.

I give this 4.5/5 stars!

A big thanks to Netgalley and Mulholland Books in exchange for my honest review.

THE BIRDWATCHER
William Shaw
Mulholland Books
ISBN 978-0316316248
Hardcover
Mystery

The mystery genre has long been composed of strong and resolute authors who would be worth reading in any genre. William Shaw is one of these. Shaw is a well-respected popular culture journalist who was up until a few years ago primarily known for his non-fiction books. He more recently has turned to detective fiction --- a blessing indeed --- beginning with the wonderful and haunting novel SHE’S LEAVING HOME, which introduced the team of Breen and Tozer. Coming off of a trilogy featuring those characters Shaw now favors us with what appears to be a standalone work (sometimes it’s hard to tell these days) titled THE BIRDWATCHER and which is exquisite in every way. It’s a slow burn book which begins with a violent crime and ends explosively, with plenty of character development and all bits and sorts of the elements which we have come to love and expect in a police procedural story.

The birdwatcher of the title is William South, a police officer in a very quiet area of southeast England on the Kent coast. South’s quiet life is disrupted by two events. The first is the violent murder of his neighbor, friend and fellow birdwatcher Robert Reyner. When Reyner’s brutally beaten body is found in his cottage everyone, particularly South, is at a loss. Reyner was a quiet type who kept himself to himself, with few friends and certainly no (apparent) enemies. The second is the arrival of Alexandra Cupidi, South’s new supervising officer. Cupidi is a transfer from London, a single mother with a teenaged daughter named Zoe who is a bit of a bird fancier herself. South, due to his friendship with Reyner, is barred from the investigation of the case, but he of course cannot help himself from dipping a toe or two (or maybe a whole leg) into the investigation. Everything proceeds at a slow but steady pace, with the majority of each chapter given over to the investigation and the slowly developing friendship between South and Cupidi. They are, we learn, kindred souls. Cupidi left the London police force under a bit of a cloud --- one that she seems ready to recreate in her new position --- and South...well, his name really isn’t South and he’s hiding something as well. As we learn in the early days of THE BIRDWATCHER, South himself is a murderer, and a bit of the end of each chapter provides some information about South’s childhood, which is when the events giving rise to his own guilty secret occurred. Indeed, South’s past collides with his present when a grisly discovery appears to resolve the mystery of who murdered Reyner, if not entirely why. That isn’t the end of the story, however. A revelation near the beginning of the book’s two-third mark increases the pace --- you won’t want to put it down from that point to story’s end --- as more secrets are unearthed and revealed, resulting in a violent, shattering conclusion that stands in a sharp contrast to what has gone before.

THE BIRDWATCHER ends on a sad but nonetheless upbeat note. I’m not quite sure how Shaw pulls that off, but he does, and I’m glad for it. There may not be a sequel in the offing for THE BIRDWATCHER but the book should certainly bring additional attention to Shaw’s superlative work and will undoubtedly create a demand for more. Strongly recommended.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
© Copyright 2017, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

William Shaw’s Breen and Tozer series ( She’s Leaving Home, The Kings of London, A Song for the Brokenhearted ) series is notable for its intense 60s setting, so it’s not too surprising that Shaw’s standalone, The Birdwatcher presents an equally compelling atmospheric novel, this time set on the Kentish coast. Grounded against a stark unfriendly landscape, The Birdwatcher is the story of police sergeant William South, a solitary man who plugs away at his job and spends his time …. bird-watching. And he’s picked a great place for it, a marshy area on a remote shingled promontory, a perfect area for shore birds and its nuclear reactors don’t exactly attract tourists:

Behind the black tower of the old lighthouse, the metal and concrete blocks that surrounded the two reactors rose, unnaturally massive in the flat land. These colossal shapes were surrounded by rows of razor-wire fences.

William South’s paced, orderly, quiet life begins to unravel when he’s assigned to “hand holding” the new DS, Alexandra Cupidi who’s transferred, as it turns out, under a cloud from the Met. A single parent with a troubled teenage daughter, Cupidi’s just arrived and she’s already caught a murder case. South tries to beg off the assignment, he’d “always avoided murder,” and to make matters worse, the victim is his neighbour, friend and fellow birder, Robert Rayner.

Rayner has been savagely beaten to death over a period of time. Cupidi feels that the murder is very personal, a result of rage. As she investigates, with South reluctantly by her side, it becomes clear that Rayner lied about his past.

In spite of the fact that South did not want to become involved in the murder case, soon his entire life, private and professional, is taken over by DS Cupidi. There’s a sign of things to come when he sits in the car she’s had for a day, and already has to move crumbs and food wrappers aside in order to sit. South valiantly sends out hermit vibes which Cupidi blithely ignores. Soon she sets up headquarters, for convenience, at South’s house, violating his carefully established privacy.

Where South is methodical, Cupidi seems to embrace chaos. It would be easy to underestimate Cupidi, but South realises that would be a mistake when they discuss the victim’s private life:

“To be honest, now I think about it, he never talked that much about anything else.”

She stood, looked at her watch. “Because he didn’t have anything to say? Or because he had something to hide?”

He would have to watch her, he thought.

The investigation of Rayner’s murder is alternated with chapters which reveal South’s past in Ireland. We know from page one, that South has something to hide (which explains his lifestyle), and we also know that the past will inevitably catch up to the present.

The police procedural is not my favourite type of crime novel, as all too often this form can bog down in detail. Not so with The Birdwatcher, and while I wasn’t entirely convinced by the ending, the compelling narrative, along with the idea of the futility of trying to escape one’s fate, make for a gripping read. Shaw convincingly makes the argument that bird-watching and policework, at least for William South, go hand in hand. Bird-watching has made South a better policeman, or perhaps it’s vice versa. As with Breen and Tozer, Shaw has created a fascinating dynamic between South and Cupidi, and Shaw fans will be pleased.

Review copy

This novel has probably one of the best first paragraphs I've read in quite a while:

"There were two reasons why William South did not want to be on the murder team. The first was that it was October. The migrating birds had begun arriving on the coast. The second was that, though nobody knew, he was a murderer himself."

Wow! Doesn't this just make you want to keep reading? Well done William Shaw!

William South lives alone in a tiny coastguard cottage in Dungeness, Kent near the nuclear power station. South has been a policeman for over twenty years. An ordinary copper, he is assigned to support the new Detective Sergeant as she is unfamiliar with the area. DS Alexandra Cupidi has just moved to Kent with her daughter. Her previous job was with the London Metropolitan Police.

"Birding had always been his one safe place."

South, an avid birdwatcher, uses the skills he has learned as a birder in his police work. He writes all his observations down in his notebook, a discipline that all birders work to acquire. Birding has made him patient. Birdwatching has been his passion ever since he was a child. It is an occupation for a solitary boy, and a solitary man.

"Birdwatching was like being a beat copper. You spent your days looking for anomalies. Things that were just a little different."

The first case DS Cupidi is tasked with is a murder. When William South learns that the murder victim is his good friend, fellow birder, and close neighbor, he is deeply troubled. Bob Rayner had been a nice gentle man, a private man, much like South himself. His murder was brutally violent causing South to re-access his love of the place where he lives.

"It wasn't just the threat of violence, the idea that the killer was out there still; something dark had been stirred up".

South lives alone partly because he does not want to inflict his 'baggage' on another person. He grew up in Armagh, Northern Ireland during a time when school children practiced running in a zigzag pattern so as to avoid being shot at. Back then his name was Billy McGowan and his father was in the paramilitaries. His experiences in 1978 during "The Troubles" have indelibly colored his life and he lives with guilt on a daily basis.

DS Cupidi works all the hours God sends. As a result her teenage daughter Zoë is often left to her own devices. Zoë harbours a lot of anger at her mother for taking her out of South London and away from all of her friends. She is not getting along at her new school and fights with her classmates. Cupidi enlists South to take Zoë out birdwatching to keep her out of trouble. Much to South's surprise he finds that Zoë is a natural birder who displays a real interest in the pursuit.

The murder investigation spurs other crimes. Other murders. One of which is connected to South's past in Northern Ireland. DS Cupidi, at first very friendly toward South, turns distant and decidedly cool. Why? Will South's career survive the secrets he carries?

This was a great read! All of the characters were so real that you felt compassion for them and you become invested in their fate. The Dungeness, Kent setting was atmospheric and perfectly suited to the story. Like many novels the action was divided between a past narrative (Billy's boyhood in Northern Ireland), and a present narrative (his adult life as a policeman in Kent). The author skillfully alternated between the two time periods and linked them up in a cohesive manner. The suspense-filled final pages will delight all those who relish crime thrillers and police procedurals. All in all - reading time well spent!

In this novel William South was very much the protagonist and DS Cupidi a supportive character. When I finished reading the book I found myself wishing the characters would return in another novel - though "The Birdwatcher" was touted as being a stand-alone. I then discovered that DS Cupidi is returning in another book entitled "Salt Lane" which is #1 in the DS Alexandra Cupidi series. I've already added "Salt Lane" to my TBR.

I received a digital copy of this book from Mulholland Books via NetGalley in consideration of my honest and unbiased review.

One of my favorite books I've read in a while. I just love the characters, the unique and somewhat desolate setting, and a plot that zips along. Will be looking forward to hear more from these characters.

This was a very smartly written police procedural with a unique main character. This reads slow, which is a positive. It isn't an action packed thriller, but an unfolding of story with some greatly developed characters.

The first thing we learn about Police Officer William South is that he doesn't want to be on the murder team for two reasons: first, migrating birds have been arriving on the Kent coast and he doesn't want to miss them, and second, he's a murderer himself, a secret no one knows.

Nevertheless, when new detective sergeant Alexandra Cupidi arrives from London, South, a community officer, is asked to partner with her. The murder victim is South's own neighbor, Robert Rayner, a fellow birder violently killed in his cottage. It's mostly quiet in this part of Dungeness, a low bleak headland extending from the marshes, with only a few cottages and a nuclear power station—and the birds, of course. But following upon the one violent murder is the disappearance of Judy Farouk, a low-level drug dealer who lives in a nearby trailer park.

The story bounces back and forth between the present and South's boyhood in Northern Ireland, a history that follows the middle-aged veteran cop to the present. Although a solid police procedural, the novel is rich in characterization. We see a friendship grow between South and Cupidi, as well as between South and Cupidi's teenage daughter, Zoe, who is rebellious and angry—but who comes to love birding with South.

The qualities that mark a good birder—patience and the ability to watch for a long time—help South in the investigation, which slowly unspools, in a direction that ties together plotlines you didn't even know were part of the main story.

This is not Shaw's first novel, but it may be his breakout novel. THE BIRDWATCHER has been longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and the buzz has been growing for months. It's worthy of all the good reviews. This is an intelligent, solid police procedural that is compelling, and it has a powerful ending.