Art of Death

After the mayhem and general all-round madness of 2019, let’s start 2020 in a calmer frame of mind . . . and allow me to introduce you to a new addition to the Constable list. Meet Vince Caine, aka the Veggie Cop, aka . . . the Mindful Detective.

This series is set in the West Country and kicks off at an uber-hip art gallery – The Butcher’s Hook – in Somerset, where a famously narcissistic performance artist is found floating in a tank of formaldehyde at her own private view. Such a bizarre murder merits the attention of a left-field thinker, so the officer leading the investigation, DI Shanti Joyce, is soon banging a path to Vince Caine’s remote eco cabin down in Lyme Regis.

Of course we have a chalk and cheese pairing here, but it’s deftly done here by Laurence, who is one half of a husband-and-wife illustrated children’s books team, and winner of the Carnegie in 2016 for his YA fiction.

Future murders will take Vince and Shanti to other hotspots in the West Country – Glastonbury, Stonehenge, and the Eden Project down in Cornwall. So join the series from the start and be prepared to fall in love with an unlikely yet irresistible police pairing!

Krystyna Green