Material Evidence (A Jack Carston Mystery)

This is the first novel in a crime/mystery series set in a fictional town in north-east Scotland called Cairnburgh. The books feature Detective Chief Inspector Jack Carston, happily married to his photographer wife, Kath, whose good humour and common sense act as a perfect stabilising mechanism which makes him more able to accept the depressing evidence of man’s inhumanity to man with which he’s constantly confronted in his job. Stephanie Burnham’s mutilated body is discovered by her husband. A chair’s overturned, books are scattered around and there are other, more sinister signs of what must have happened. For DCI Jack Carston, newly arrived in Scotland, the case is a conundrum. The evidence points to the husband – the marriage was a sham, they both had lovers – but his alibi is sound. And there are too many other threads to be followed, not least the mystery of the woman herself. What was she? A high-flying businesswoman or a middle-aged drunken depressive? Sexy or frigid, intelligent or stupid, callous or loving? It seems to depend on who’s answering his questions. To solve the mystery of her death, Carston first needs to find out who she was. In his review of Material Evidence, the critic of the Press and Journal wrote: ‘The story concerns murder and adultery in the Aberdeen commuter town of Cairnburgh. But who did what to whom? That’s what DCI Carston has to unravel. Fine Rendellian touches and a structure and depth that is rare in a first book make this a cracking page-turner. The denouement, when it comes, will shake you.’