Blog Tour - Disposal by David Evans

What's the book about?

August 1976 and it seems as though the long hot summer will never end. Early morning at Clacton on the north Essex coast, a light aircraft takes off from the airstrip but struggles for height and crashes into the sea. First on the scene, Sergeant Cyril Claydon pulls the pilot’s body from the wreckage. But something else catches his eye. A bulky package wrapped in black plastic is on the passenger seat. Returning to investigate, he makes a grim discovery – another body. And so begins a series of events that puts him and others in danger as he is drawn into the investigation, having to work alongside DI ‘Dick’ Barton, a man with totally alien attitudes. Can they work together?

My review - 

Police Sergeant Cyril Claydon sees a small plane crash into the sea. When it’s investigated, there’s a suspicious package next to the pilot – a plastic-wrapped body. It seems someone had been using this method to get rid of the bodies of murdered people. The local DI, John ‘Dick’ Barton is a man down after his detective sergeant had an accident, so Cyril is seconded into the group – with a horribly abrasive new boss in DI Barton.
 
I very much enjoyed the relationship between Barton and Cyril Claydon, especially the way it developed over the course of the book. For me, it was more interesting than the crime mystery, as I found that with such a large number of characters, some only briefly encountered, I kept losing track and mixing people up. I like to get to know each character, good and bad, and feel I have a grip on who is who. Some of them slipped passed as I blinked. Nevertheless, the story is well written and many of the relationships as they unfolded, bode well for the future. It's a jolly good read.

About the Author

David Evans is a Scots-born writer who found his true love as well as his inspiration for his detective series, set primarily in Wakefield. Having written all his life, in 2012 he decided to go for it – successfully as the next year, in 2013, he was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger Award.
The Wakefield Series became an International Bestseller in June 2017 with success in Canada and Australia as well as the UK. But now, whilst the Wakefield Series awaits the next instalment, David Evans has written Disposal, the first in the Tendring Series, a completely new detective series set in north Essex in the 1970s.

Disposal is available here in the UK and here in the US.

​David's website is here.