Song of the Dead
Douglas Lindsay
Rating: A–
Police detective Ben Westphall is burnt out and leading a quiet life in the North of Scotland. Thing change when he’s assigned to investigate the cold case of a UK national who disappeared in Eastern Europe under mysterious circumstances and who, despite being declared dead, has re-appeared, claiming to have been held for over a decade, various body parts having been harvested during that time…more
I am a mass consumer of detective novels. I’ll even admit that I read more detective novels than I do horror novels. It’s true. There’s something about the genre that brings me back more often than any other. It’s a little like pizza. I love all kinds of food, sushi, Indian, Mexican, Chinese, German, Polish, all great, but I’ll have pizza ten times in-between each of them. It simply pleases me more.
Having read so many in the genre it’s rare to come across something truly different or singularly unique. Not that each story needs to break new ground or transcend the genre by any means. The tropes will always be there to some extent, murder, investigations, missing persons, brooding/troubled detective, etc. So, I tend to find that where the newness comes from is in the characters, more specifically, our lead detective.
Lindsay’s Scottish police detective, Ben Westphall, is unlike any I have come across and his uniqueness is what I love most about this novel. The story about a man who has been dead for twelve years, body identified and buried, who somehow reappears out of the thin blue sky, alive and in tact, is enough of a draw for any fan of mystery, and the nuts and bolts of this bizarre and perplexing tale are flawlessly executed, but for me, it’s all about Ben. And it’s all about Dorothy.
Now, I will not tell you anything about Dorothy, but I will
tell you a little about what makes Detective Ben Westphall so singular and
uncommon. He’s the most spiritual,
metaphysical and preternatural character I have ever come across in the
detective genre, and that is something that speaks directly to me. He is
incredibly deep, thoughtful and has a heavy, active conscious that is open to
any possibility, no matter how surreal or impossible the logic is.
It is this hypnotic, unexpected inner life that
sets Douglas Lindsay’s detective novel apart from so many others and why it is
my book of the month.
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