THE SIDEMAN

A police officer is so sure a man’s getting away with murder that she quits to investigate on her own.

Even though the traffic police have given him a perfect alibi, DI Costello knows in her bones that George Haggerty murdered his wife, Abigail, and their son, Malcolm. Her partner of 20 years, Colin Anderson, has been dealing with problems of his own ever since he discovered he had a daughter he’d never known and a grandson with Down syndrome, Baby Moses, who's now under his care (The Suffering of Strangers, 2018). Haggerty is taunting Costello, and Anderson worries about how far she’ll go now that the case has been passed on to Complaints and Investigations, where nasty DCI Mathieson seems more interested in police wrongdoing than murder. Instead of Haggerty, some of Costello’s mates suspect Abigail’s sister, high-functioning alcoholic lawyer Valerie Abernethy. After first trying to kill herself, Valerie decides that revenge is a better choice. An accidental meeting with Costello, who’s been beaten and lost part of her memory, gives Valerie her chance. Meanwhile, in a wild area north of Loch Lomond now popular as a tourist hiking destination, DCI Alastair Patrick, a cop with a mysterious sideline, finds the body of a savagely beaten man clinging to life. When another police officer goes missing in the same area and his blood is found mingled with that of Costello, she’s suspected of his murder. Anderson is working on cold case rapes, and information from a police officer who works not far from the hiking area unites the cases in surprising ways. Desperate to prove Costello innocent, Anderson can do so only by figuring out how Haggerty could have been in two places at the same time.

A solid police procedural with more twists and turns than some of Scotland’s dangerously narrow roads.