Will they or won't they? That's the question, the golden thread of tension that's been keeping Jane Casey's reader guessing since she first introduced the fatal attraction between DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent.
The relationship has played out over the course of nine police procedural novels where it has acted as an emotional mooring for the series, never too far from the surface but never dominant.
In this tenth instlament, however, Casey blows the format sky high moving Kerrigan and Derwent out of London and into the highly fertile territory of the domestic thriller. The two Met detectives are sent undercover at the behest of a senior aide to the London Mayor to try to discover how her brother-in-law ended up dead. They leave London for the deceptive tranquility of semi rural England where, posing as a couple, they spy on their new neighbours in a Ramsey Streetesque cul de sac.
Never mind that the set up is more than a little contrived, it doesn't matter a bit as it allows Casey's talent free reign to deliver a tense and intriguing thriller and put the "question" front and centre. It works an absolute treat. Forced to play the happy couple to, the detectives test their commitment to their professionalism to destruction as their circumstances force them closer together than ever.
And the rest of the story roars along too. Casey populates The Close with an entertaining and disturbing cast of busybodies, gossips, loners, narcissistic lycra-clad bike bros and yummy mummies. Kerrigan and Derwent have been sent to observe just one house, but after a couple of weeks see threats and potential murderers behind every closed door and net curtained window.
Casey's just very very good at this. Besides the question and the primary investigation, she keeps several threads alive, including an ongoing investigation back in London that Kerrigan is managing through Zoom calls. She explores important difficult issues such as domestic abuse and the exploitation of vulnerable adults. And it's all done at a pace that never feels hurried but keeps a good momentum up towards a dramatic conclusion. It's another fine episode in the series, which I reviewed here a couple of years ago.