Karen
The author bio for S.R. White reads thus:
S.R. White worked for a UK police force for twelve years, before returning to academic life and taking an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. He now lives in Queensland, Australia.
He's the author of the Dana Russo series (HERMIT / PRISONER / RED DIRT ROAD and WHITE ASH RIDGE), and now this standalone, PACIFIC HEIGHTS with another standalone due out in March 2026, DEAD FALL LAKE. On the plus side then a good sized catalogue, on the negative side, why has it taken me so long to latch onto these novels....
PACIFIC HEIGHTS is an unusually structured police procedural, with five witnesses to the stabbing murder of a local waitress, late at night, in the courtyard of a block of flats, most of which look inwards. Lay-down misère you'd think, it's certainly what Detectives Carl 'Bluey' Blueson and Lachlan Dyson thought, bit of a doddle, exactly the thing for a couple of cops whose careers have taken a downward trajectory in recent times. Sure it's a small investigation team, just those two, the first constable on scene who turns out to be a diamond in the making, a couple of assisting uniformed officers, and a tricky dynamo of an admin assistant. The whole thing seems to hinge on what the five witnesses saw being pieced together into a full picture. Only one of them, the man discovered beside the body covered in the victim's blood, has quite the back story involving one of the detectives, even if he did call emergency services first. Along with three others in the building, all of them also calling for help, all of whom turn out to be pretty adept at answering just what they are asked, and nothing more. Then there's the building caretaker, tucked away in a room doing machinery maintenance, right beside the murder scene, who didn't see or hear anything. None of this is at all helped by the fact that every single witness only saw a little bit of the puzzle. Obscured viewpoints, different angles, different states of awareness, and then there's the question of who would want to stab a young woman right outside her own home. Even as it becomes increasingly obvious that the victim was a piece of work in her own right.
Starting out with pretty high hopes, these two detectives have to firstly get into the rhythm of a working partnership, deal with the complications of the witness and a shared fraught past, and then fathom what is the question that they haven't realised they should be asking.
To be honest it's not really that hard to pick the likely suspect in this scenario, but this was a novel very much about the journey, not the destination. The building of a partnership between two similar, yet different cops was engaging, as was the working relationship they had to develop with their admin assistant and the young constable, the four of them rapidly becoming a good team. Switching the investigation from that seemingly lay-down scenario to a more messy, complicated, odd feeling set of testimonies and a young victim who may have more than a few skeletons in her own closet, happened seamlessly, as the detectives struggled to nail their obvious case to a suspect, and an arrest. The interactions between this small team were really the focus of this novel, pulling in a little of the personal, but really concentrating on the difficulties of how you recover a career from a mess of your own making whilst still doing the job itself.
All in all, the focus or structure of PACIFIC HEIGHTS felt different, and the end result was engaging reading, especially given it's not going to be too tricky for a reader to pick the suspect, their motive and a couple of very good theories as to how opportunity came about.
Originally posted at www.austcrimefiction.org.
The author bio for S.R. White reads thus:
S.R. White worked for a UK police force for twelve years, before returning to academic life and taking an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. He now lives in Queensland, Australia.
He's the author of the Dana Russo series (HERMIT / PRISONER / RED DIRT ROAD and WHITE ASH RIDGE), and now this standalone, PACIFIC HEIGHTS with another standalone due out in March 2026, DEAD FALL LAKE. On the plus side then a good sized catalogue, on the negative side, why has it taken me so long to latch onto these novels....
PACIFIC HEIGHTS is an unusually structured police procedural, with five witnesses to the stabbing murder of a local waitress, late at night, in the courtyard of a block of flats, most of which look inwards. Lay-down misère you'd think, it's certainly what Detectives Carl 'Bluey' Blueson and Lachlan Dyson thought, bit of a doddle, exactly the thing for a couple of cops whose careers have taken a downward trajectory in recent times. Sure it's a small investigation team, just those two, the first constable on scene who turns out to be a diamond in the making, a couple of assisting uniformed officers, and a tricky dynamo of an admin assistant. The whole thing seems to hinge on what the five witnesses saw being pieced together into a full picture. Only one of them, the man discovered beside the body covered in the victim's blood, has quite the back story involving one of the detectives, even if he did call emergency services first. Along with three others in the building, all of them also calling for help, all of whom turn out to be pretty adept at answering just what they are asked, and nothing more. Then there's the building caretaker, tucked away in a room doing machinery maintenance, right beside the murder scene, who didn't see or hear anything. None of this is at all helped by the fact that every single witness only saw a little bit of the puzzle. Obscured viewpoints, different angles, different states of awareness, and then there's the question of who would want to stab a young woman right outside her own home. Even as it becomes increasingly obvious that the victim was a piece of work in her own right.
Starting out with pretty high hopes, these two detectives have to firstly get into the rhythm of a working partnership, deal with the complications of the witness and a shared fraught past, and then fathom what is the question that they haven't realised they should be asking.
To be honest it's not really that hard to pick the likely suspect in this scenario, but this was a novel very much about the journey, not the destination. The building of a partnership between two similar, yet different cops was engaging, as was the working relationship they had to develop with their admin assistant and the young constable, the four of them rapidly becoming a good team. Switching the investigation from that seemingly lay-down scenario to a more messy, complicated, odd feeling set of testimonies and a young victim who may have more than a few skeletons in her own closet, happened seamlessly, as the detectives struggled to nail their obvious case to a suspect, and an arrest. The interactions between this small team were really the focus of this novel, pulling in a little of the personal, but really concentrating on the difficulties of how you recover a career from a mess of your own making whilst still doing the job itself.
All in all, the focus or structure of PACIFIC HEIGHTS felt different, and the end result was engaging reading, especially given it's not going to be too tricky for a reader to pick the suspect, their motive and a couple of very good theories as to how opportunity came about.
Originally posted at www.austcrimefiction.org.