As the Crow Flies
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By Damien Boyd
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1 review
Rock climbers can’t afford to make careless mistakes. But Detective Inspector Nick Dixon’s former climbing partner, Jake Fayter, died doing just that. Or so it seems. Dixon suspects foul play, but his only leads are unreliable accounts of something odd happening in Cheddar Gorge seconds before Jake fell.
The more Dixon learns about Jake’s life, the more he realises that Jake hadn’t been quite the man he remembered…and a lot of people could have wanted him dead. Once Dixon gets too close to the truth, those people will emerge from the shadows and kill to protect their secrets.
As the body count rises, Dixon bends the rules to breaking point to lure out a killer and unravel a conspiracy of silence that will rock the sleepy town of Burnham-on-Sea to its core.
As the Crow Flies is the electrifying first novel in the DI Nick Dixon Crime Series.
Revised edition: This edition of As the Crow Flies includes editorial revisions.
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The DI Nick Dixon series by Damien Boyd launched in 2013 with As the Crow Flies and Book 10 (Down Among the Dead) was published earlier this year.
Dixon has transferred to Somerset, after 5 years in the Metropolitan Police. Now a policeman he originally trained as a solicitor and this stands him in good stead with some of the complex cases he has to deal with. As with most central characters in crime novels he is something of a maverick, often ignoring procedure and getting himself into some dangerous situations, but he always wins through in the end. A detective with nine lives!
The plots are complex, intriguing and fast-paced; and you become very immersed in the area because the descriptive writing is excellent.
Like his leading character, the author was himself a solicitor before he turned to writing and was probably more used to writing reports than fiction. However, this real-life experience of criminal law (which included a spell with the Crown Prosecution Service) has served him well and these books are thoroughly enjoyable.
I have been working my way through the series and while I found the writing style of the first book rather stilted, it has improved with subsequent books and is very engaging. In fact, this series gets better and better. By book 10 Di Nick Dixon has been through many hair-raising exploits and he’s finally gets around to proposing to his girlfriend, DS Jane Winter. I hope she's checked his life insurance!
Seriously, this is a very good series and well worth reading. As for ratings and Stars, I’d give 3 for the first two books, then 4+ from then on. Book 11 is in now being written.
Review by: Eve
