After 15 years spent investigating organized crime in Liverpool, Detective Sergeant Nicola Bridge has returned to her childhood home on England’s southwest coast. In the sleepy village of Fleetcombe, she hopes to patch up her marriage and enjoy a calmer pace of life, far from lawless gangs and brutal murders.
Her best-laid plans are quickly upended when a dead man is discovered on a lonely stretch of country road. The body has not been dumped but staged: The man, identified as Jim Tiernan, the landlord of the White Hart pub, is tied to a chair, clad in a sack and wearing a huge pair of deer antlers.
Finding herself once again with a major case on her hands, Nicola teams up with Detective Constable Harry Ward and goes in search of a killer whose actions are as mystifying as they are horrifying.
“Death at the White Hart” is the debut novel from Chris Chibnall. It has a similar set-up to the English writer’s celebrated TV series “Broadchurch”: It features a detective duo out to solve a macabre murder in a fictional Dorset coastal village — a place where everyone knows everyone, and everyone has something to hide.
Not that Chibnall’s novel is a lazy carbon copy. His murder is more elaborate (“Why antlers?” asks Nicola) and his choice of victim more inspired: Who better to end up dead than the man at the heart of the community, privy to every dark fear, underhand affair, festering secret and simmering resentment?
Chibnall also excels with his cast of suspects, all of whom add color and complexity to the proceedings. Delivery driver Eddie is a nervy individual “with a fuse that could border on the short” and a van big enough to move a body. Deakins is a crotchety farmer on whose land is found the body of a deer —without a head.
Jim’s Ukrainian partner, Irina, has no alibi for the night he was killed, while hairdresser Frankie panics under questioning and fabricates one. Overseeing all the goings-on in the village is a 9-year-old girl who has learned the hard way that it is safer outdoors than in.
This whodunit is at its most involving when the spotlight is on Nicola and Harry. He is fresh-faced and inexperienced but excited about taking on his first murder case and eager to prove himself. She is tough (colleagues have praised her “absolute lack of squeam”) and dedicated, particularly when she doubles her efforts and becomes “a one-person whirling dervish of investigation.”
