The Syndicate Six Murder takes place in rural Hampshire, England in a world-famous Police Staff College. The murder victim is Detective Harold Ashington and since the murder scene is surrounded by police, the main suspects are all officers of the law. Lead investigator Detective Superintendent Ralph Blade has a history with the deceased and has motive to want him dead (as do many other people). The book is a fairly fast paced police procedural with an entertaining cast of characters and an interesting investigation thread.
My favorite part of the book was by far the relationship between the different people in the investigative team. I thought the main three - Ralph Blade, John Hyde, and Dorothy Fraser - were really well fleshed out characters. The other members of the investigative team did tend to blend together more for me, but they had much less character development than the main three. I liked how we got scenes in each of the main three's home lives with their spouses and their individual routines. It really helped to see them as their own characters with their own complex lives. We don't get a lot of these home scenes, but the ones we do get are packed with information and are used very effectively. The reader gets small glimpses into the lives of these officers and then we can see how some of their home lives bleed into the case their working on which is pretty interesting. These home scenes were often somewhat lighter than the investigation scenes, so they served as very brief times where the tension and pacing could let up a bit and give the reader a bit of a break before diving back into the story.
The pacing of this book was pretty fast, but not in a bad way - it really felt like an hour long episode of a TV crime drama. I'm not usually fond of short or fast paced books, I want to read something I can really sink my teeth into and get to know the characters. I'm more of a character-driven reader than a plot-driven one so longer books are usually my preference. In this case, however, I'm glad I made an exception and picked up this 150 page book because there is so much packed into those pages that it really doesn't fall into the normal pitfalls of short books for me. The narrative managed to cover a lot of ground and the characters had a good amount of depth to them. The mystery wasn't particularly complex or convoluted - but the investigators did chase down a lot of leads and suspects in the 150 pages. There wasn't a whole lot of plot outside of the main investigation, which again helped the pacing to stay on a quick track. There is a deadline given to Blade at the beginning of the investigation so he needs his people to work quickly and that pressure does come through in the narrative to the reader. The only downside to the faster pacing was that there were so many different people introduced - especially in the beginning - that it was hard to keep everyone straight. I had to keep flipping back a few pages to figure out who some people were. But after the first 25% of the book, I had the different characters down pretty well. I, naturally, wished we were able to get more of the character's backstory and history (especially more of Ashington's history with other officers) but that would have really dragged down the pacing of the book. I do think we got all the information we needed as a reader but there were just some characters and situations that I really wanted more of.
One thing that irked me a bit was the lip reading that was introduced. From what I understand based on some YouTube videos made by deaf/Deaf/hard of hearing people, is that lip reading is very difficult to do and even the most skilled lip readers can often only catch a certain amount of words and then have to fill in the blanks to the rest of the conversation. So the fact that the DI Dorothy Fraser tells a story about being on surveillance and watching criminals having a conversation in a bar and being able to get all the details of the crime they were planning just from lipreading felt unrealistic and a bit convenient. Luckily, the lip reading only came into play a few times, mostly at the beginning of the book, and no major investigative steps were taken due to the information gathered from the lip reading so it in the grand scheme of the plot, it wasn't too heavy handed.
Another thing I did find it a bit annoying was that Blade was pretty sure he had figured out who the murderer was a few days before actually arresting them (to give his team time to gather evidence, run tests, etc) but he wouldn't tell anyone (not even the reader). He would think to himself something along the lines of "I'll let him go investigate that thread but I'm confident I already know who did it". I understand this can build tension in the reader because we want to know who the killer is also. But the fact that we had to wait for Blade to make his grand presentation and arrest the killer at the end, in front of everyone, had me rolling my eyes a bit. And maybe other readers will be able to pick up on stuff I didn't in the narrative and figure it out ahead of time, but I felt the breadcrumbs left for the reader were pretty limited as far as being able to figure it out for ourselves. That being said, the ending did make complete sense and I was glad the motive didn't come out of left field or anything so it was satisfying even if I had to deal with Blade teasing the reader for a handful of pages.
Finally, this book is set in England and relies heavily on English slang. I assume the author is also British, but he doesn't have any author information listed on GoodReads and I can't find any other author webpages or any other details about him so I'm not entirely sure. In any case, the slang is pretty widely used in this book and some of the characters are specifically pointed out as being from specific parts of the country so they have very particular accents and slang. I'm an American reader, but I do watch a ton of British TV shows and comedians so I feel that I have a pretty good grasp on the slang terms and I personally didn't have any trouble understanding the writing. I did appreciate having a frame of reference so when the one character is described as having a Geordie accent so then going forward I would read her dialogue in that accent. There is a glossary of terms in the back of the book so anyone who isn't as comfortable with British slang will be able to still follow along. The slang usage isn't overwhelming or overdone by any means, but it is fairly consistent throughout the book.
Overall, this was a fast-paced, well crafted police procedural mystery. The characters were well developed and the mystery was fun to follow along with.
150 pages.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC! Publication date: October 30, 2020.
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