I had not encountered the Chris Honeysett crime books previously. He's a painter, art teacher, and private eye with no occupation paying all the bills. He lives in Bath, in the southwest of England, and can't afford an office so he meets clients in coffee shops. Today an insurance firm asks Chris to trace a trout fisherman, previously declared dead after a boating accident, whose life insurance payout equaled one and a half million pounds.
LOCK 13 is in Somerset where the fisherman Henry Blinkhorn was photographed recently by a magazine -- if it is the same man. He'd have to be daft to stay near his past friends and his wife, who's enjoying the payout. Chris finds that Somerset is a big county. With lots and lots of water. Ah well, an artist with an easel won't look out of place.
This detective novel is an interesting inversion of the usual exploration of who killed someone and why. As well as finding someone possibly alive, though, Chris Honeysett starts to search for his life model Verity when the impecunious young woman fails to appear two classes in a row. A young man she knew died when his flat caught fire, and Chris is worried that she may be in trouble.
Fans of hard-boiled American private eyes will find Chris a change, as he doesn't seem to have a license or a PI manual. The police work more around him than with him, and his contacts stockpile rusty classic cars, fly drones, or sit in pubs for metal concerts. He has a sort-of girlfriend, Annis, an artist getting well paid by rock stars. Chris tends to tell the reader about his life in lengthy paragraphs and interject brief conversations with friends or dodgy blokes. I suspect he is lonely.
The tale involves much gently paced surveying of the countryside and inhabitants, from luxury cottages to traveler caravans and narrowboats on the canals. Hence canal LOCK 13 of the title. The canals are definitely my favorite part of the story. Peter Helton was born in Germany and now lives, writes and paints in scenic West Country England. LOCK 13 is the seventh book in the Chris Honeysett series and there are four books in the Inspector Liam McLusky series, which I have yet to sample. As I enjoy crime tales set in this part of the world the odds are good I'll get around to reading them.
Bath, England. When his life drawing model disappears without trace, painter-sleuth Chris Honeysett uncovers evidence of a dangerous conspiracy. Henry Blinkhorn drowned when his boat capsized in the Severn estuary. So how come his photograph appears on the front cover of The Angler six years later? The insurers who paid out a small fortune on his death have asked private investigator Chris Honeysett to track down the elusive Mr Blinkhorn and prove he’s still alive. But Honeysett is sidetracked from the investigation by the sudden disappearance of his life drawing model, Verity Lake. Commandeering a narrowboat and heading down the Kennet & Avon canal, he hopes to kill two birds with one stone, by tracking down Henry Blinkhorn and also discovering what’s happened to Verity. But it soon becomes clear that someone else is on Honeysett’s trail. Who are they … and what are they really after?
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