Roy Grace is the featured detective in a long-running series of British police procedurals, set on the south coast of England. Bristol seems to be a pleasant city, full of history, colleges and entertainment. THEY THOUGHT I WAS DEAD shows another side. Roy’s wife Sandy left him without a word and seemingly without a trace in an earlier book of the series, and this reflected poorly on his career; he was passed over for promotion, suspected of her killing, and emotionally wrecked. What really happened? Sandy now tells her story.

Sandy Grace seems to have been bright enough to marry a good man, but not bright enough to stay with him and support his policing career. She feels lonely and neglected every time he is called to a major crime scene – which readers see as an exciting crime story. Through a series of bad choices, Sandy gets into major debt by gambling at a casino with money from a thug. Rather than live in fear she decides to vanish. The book tells the rest of her travels in a series of calamities and brief periods of peace.

I have a lot of questions, such as why Sandy would not have told Roy anything. She was never afraid of him. She gambles in a way that seems childish and attention-seeking, at first to try to improve their home, then just for the thrill. As she has a job, couldn’t she have found another interest, like a college course? The real problem is that Sandy makes a (false) woman friend whose Instagram-worthy life, in the days before Instagram, makes Sandy envious. Well, sure enough, envy has been the ruin of many. To me, the scene that doesn’t ring true is when Sandy is sitting for hours in a restaurant waiting for Roy to join her for dinner, and he keeps texting from the station saying he’s delayed. She’s a copper’s wife, in her thirties, she would order and eat her dinner, or take it home. 

A few switches of scenery include the island of Jersey and locations in Germany, where we see Sandy’s judgment has not improved. She thinks she has left the original menace behind, but we really know she hasn’t, maintaining tension.

Peter James writes two kinds of crime books. The Roy Grace series I enjoy. Police camaraderie, recurring characters and vibrant locations make the books such as Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead memorable. The other books are standalone tales of generally unpleasant characters living brutal or wicked lives, which have their place in the canon but don’t appeal to me. While THEY THOUGHT I WAS DEAD is technically part of Roy’s tale, the atmosphere is completely the standalone kind. Fans of the series can decide to read this one and find the answers, or not. I believe the benefit of Sandy’s story is to show how underappreciated coppers’ wives really are, and to explain why so many marriages of those committed to law enforcement are at risk.