What Falls Between the Cracks

April 30, 2018
The discovery of a hand inside a defrosted freezer in an abandoned London flat drives British author Scragg’s satisfying debut and series launch. A DNA match links the severed hand to Natasha Barclay, who lived in the flat decades earlier. When Det. Insp. Jake Porter and his partner, Det. Sgt. Nick Styles, investigate, they learn that Natasha’s father, Nathan, killed himself in 1983—around the time that he sold his haulage firm to Alexander Locke, the head of an import-export company, and Natasha disappeared. The police drug force currently has Locke, who’s now married to Nathan’s ex-wife and Natasha’s stepmother, and his security chief, James Bolton, under surveillance. Porter and Styles combine their efforts with the drug unit after one of their officers is killed and another grievously wounded in a raid. Meanwhile, a possible mole in the police department complicates their joint task. Scragg’s detectives have the right combination of passion and savvy, and his plot is easy to follow while still saving some surprises for the end. Fans of British police procedurals will eagerly await the sequel.

May 15, 2018
In an interview on the Crime Time website, debut author Scragg defines what, for him, is the perfect crime: Either nobody even knows one has been committed and it stays undiscovered, or it's covered up so well that it's impossible to unravel what happened and who is responsible. So, putting those ideas into action, Scragg gives us Natasha Barclay, whose severed hand is found in an empty apartment. After using DNA to match the hand to a person, London detective Jake Porter and his partner, Nick Styles, are blown away by the fact that Natasha has apparently been missing for 30 years, and, sadly, no one has been looking for her. Deepening the mystery is Natasha's uncooperative and well-connected family; as the story unravels, those connections become more and more sinister. This a classic police procedural, with a host of engaging characters. Porter is a daring and determined investigator, sensitized and left somewhat damaged by his own wife's unsolved murder. Recommend this fine mystery to all procedural fans, especially followers of Peter James' Roy Grace and Alison Bruce's Gary Goodhew.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)