Naked Flames

by Graham Ison

Overview

Cleverly plotted, with wry wit, a likable copper hero, and an ingenious plot, this one will keep even seasoned mystery fans off-balance Booklist

A deadly fire at a nudist club plunges DCI Harry Brock and DS Dave Poole into an explosive mix of deception, betrayal and fraud.

DCI Harry Brock’s leisurely Saturday afternoon is shattered when he receives the news that Robert Sharp, a charming, good-looking man in his thirties, has been found dead in a suspicious fire in his hut at the Pretext Club, a nudist club near Harrow.

Besides being a philandering husband, it seems Robert Sharp was a conman on the wanted list of three different constabularies, a chameleon who managed to escape the police’s clutches and justice . . . until now. Plunged into a deadly mix of deception, betrayal and fraud, Harry and his colleague DS Dave Poole soon uncover a number of people with a grudge against Robert, but can they unmask his killer?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780727892607
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	11/24/2020
Series:	A Brock & Poole Mystery , #13
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.55(w) x 8.74(h) x (d)

About the Author

During Graham Ison’s thirty-year career in Scotland Yard’s Special Branch he was involved in several espionage cases. He also spent four years at 10 Downing Street as Protection Officer to two Prime Ministers. He is an honorary agent of the US Army Criminal Investigation Command.




As well as the Brock and Poole Mysteries, Ison is the author of the Hardcastle and Marriott historical mystery series.

Editorial Reviews

"Cleverly plotted, with wry wit, a likable copper hero, and an ingenious plot, this one will keep even seasoned mystery fans off-balance"

Booklist

"Cleverly plotted, with wry wit, a likable copper hero, and an ingenious plot, this one will keep even seasoned mystery fans off-balance"

Booklist

Cleverly plotted, with wry wit, a likable copper hero, and an ingenious plot, this one will keep even seasoned mystery fans off-balance - Booklist

Fans of sweetly old-fashioned police procedurals will be rewarded - Publisher's Weekly

An eminently typical Ison procedural - Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

08/05/2019

In British author Ison’s diverting 17th Brock and Poole mystery (after 2018’s Deadlock), curmudgeonly yet likable Det. Chief Insp. Harry Brock, of the Homicide and Major Crime Command West, and his team, including his clever sidekick, Det. Sgt. David Poole, investigate the suspicious death of a nudist, Robert Sharp, in a fire at a naturist club near Harrow. The fire chief at the scene tells Brock that the evidence suggests that the victim was dead before the fire started. Not surprisingly, Sharp turns out to have been a con man and a philandering husband, who has left a meandering trail of broken hearts and angry, disillusioned women across Britain. Could one of them have wanted him dead? Meanwhile, Brock takes one tiny step closer to the 21st century when he buys a book called Computers for Seniors for Dummies so he can understand the computer lingo his colleagues use. A fine ensemble cast and some amusing dialogue lift this reassuringly anodyne offering. Fans of sweetly old-fashioned police procedurals will be rewarded. Agent: Bill Hamilton, A.M. Heath (U.K.). (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

2019-07-15
DCI Harry Brock (Deadlock, 2018, etc.) investigates the death of a con man.

Much as he hates being torn from the arms of his latest lover, luscious, well-heeled Lydia Maxwell, Brock finds a certain perverse pleasure in his latest case. He and his bagman, DS Dave Poole, are sent to investigate a murder at a naturist center. The Pretext Club, a punning take on the term "pre-textile," used by naturists to describe the state in which each human is born, caters to adults who prefer to relax and swim in the altogether. But Robert Sharp, whose naked, charred body was found in his chalet at the club after he was shot and set ablaze, seemed to have used naturism as a means of finding a more intimate—and lucrative—form of relaxation. After his demise, the police are besieged by a parade of women who had more than enough reason to set Sharp ablaze. Their stories are depressingly similar: They all met Sharp at one naturist club or another where he charmed them into bed, promised them marriage, borrowed tidy sums of money from them, and promptly disappeared, leaving most of them not only bereft, but pregnant. Brock, who likes his women wealthy but not gullible, is nevertheless keen to arrest Sharp's killer. He does need some help, not only from Poole, but from Aussie DI Kate Ebdon, whom he relies on to point out some of the finer points, like the fact that one of the women they interview is eight months pregnant. Patient police work solves the case, although readers may still wonder why, in the land of National Health, no one seems to use contraception.

An eminently typical Ison procedural, although it may make readers queasy about public swimming pools.

Kirkus Reviews