Review: Death at Paradise Park by Ross Greenwood

 

A man is murdered as he sits in his delivery van eating fish and chips.

He turns out to be Alfie Hook, husband of a woman who's just come out of prison after serving 8 years of a sentence for causing death by dangerous driving. The person she killed was a respected police officer. She also had a pistol and £200,000 of cash in her boot. 

Jackie Hook is a notorious career criminal, but her husband has very little form, and has looked after the couple's grandsons while Jackie's been away. Why would anyone want to kill him? And is there a connection between this murder and Betty Brown, a well known local drug dealer with considerably more clout than Jackie, and for whom Jackie may have been working?

DS Ashley Knight and her team begin their investigations, and soon discover that, prior to his death, Alfie had visited the Paradise Park holiday camp in Hunstanton ('Peterborough-on-Sea'.) He had no work-related deliveries to make there. The police visit the site and grill the less than helpful owner, Percival, who eventually reveals that a woman committed what was believed to be suicide in one of the vans the previous summer. They speak to some of the residents of the exclusive Diamond section of the site - the area to which Alfie's van has been traced - but although some say they have seen his distinctive red vehicle, none admits to knowing anything about him.

Then Jasmine, one of the Diamond residents, is found dead in her hot tub. And it's not long before there's another killing. And another.

Death in Paradise Park is a fairly fast moving police procedural set on the Norfolk coast. I very much enjoyed the interaction between the various police officers - Ashley, forty something, on her own, would rather not be, Barry, also on his own, always the joker but with hints of an unhappy life, Hector, the university graduate newbie, keen to learn but also in need of advice re his non existent love life. I felt that the team coalesced well, with conversations that were lifelike and interesting.  Their chats during the long car drives across Norfolk rang very true; isn't it often in cars that we have our longest and most revealing conversations?

Hunstanton Pier - image: Visit Breckland

The scenes at Paradise Park also seemed very real to me, as someone whose childhood holidays were spent at places like these (though definitely not in the Diamond areas!) The vans, the children running around, the long term owners who've made their own little gardens around their pitches. The bar, with its slightly seedy air.

Percival, the site owner, is an excellent character study of a man who wants to avoid conflict - and loss of income - at all costs. His reception staff, the idle Hamilton and the super efficient Gail, were also well drawn; I could see Gail with her clipboard, tutting at the hopeless men around her.  

Ashley's interests focus on the other residents of Diamond One. I enjoyed Hans and Helga, the elderly German couple, and their succinct comments about their neighbours. Bertie and Verne were a bit of a cliched gay couple but quite good fun. I had a little more trouble separating Pip and Glory in my mind, two women who came across as rather interchangeable but needed not to be for the plot to work. Deniz/Dennis, the hunk after whom all the women appear to lust, also felt like a bit of a cardboard cut out. 

As the police team struggle to find a link between Alfie's murder and those at the park, their investigations broaden to include the reinvented Betty Brown, now very much an Elizabeth and living in splendour with a much older businessman, Abraham Engelbert. Has Betty really cleaned up her act and given up on crime? Ashley also seeks out Cecil, retired MP and Dennis's stepfather, who confirms her views on his waster stepson with a serious gambling habit - but did Dennis, who enjoys a monthly income from his late mother's trust, need money enough to kill? 

I found the first half of this book gripping, and couldn't wait to turn the pages. I did, however, feel that the second half got too bogged down in detail, and had far too many characters. It may be, however, that some of these people had already appeared in the first book in this series, which I have not yet read. The dialogue also lost some of its edge at times; Barry is normally king of the banter, but when he and Ashley discuss surveillance - CCTV, number plate recognition, phone tracking - he sounds nothing like his normal self and far more like a textbook. Later on Barry says 

'Whatever happens in Sheffield will be occurring without us.'

To me this sounded wrong. I would've expected him to say

'will be happening without us.'

I know that authors are told not to repeat words, but I think dialogue is the exception here, as repetition is exactly what people do all the time in their day-to-day speech. The use of 'occurring' simply sent me off down a rabbit hole to Gavin & Stacy, in which Nessa is forever asking 'what's occurring?' - but that is comedy, and it takes place in Wales. We are in South Yorkshire investigating murders.

A nurse on a coma ward where one of the character's partners is being cared for says

'I'll take diligent care of Tony until Gloria returns.'

Again that sounds stilted to me; I'd have expected her to say something like

'I'll take care of him till Gloria comes back.'

I appreciate that these are small things, but anything that distracts the reader from the plot is best avoided. Another little niggle was that the residents of Diamond are said to live in luxury lodges rather than caravans, but as time goes on there are several references to their 'caravans.'

I very much liked the Norfolk coastal setting, and would have enjoyed a bit more about that - the local people, the towns, etc - as it's a strangely remote area for somewhere less than two hours' train ride from London.

The final solution to the murders was a bit convoluted, I found myself having to flip backwards and forwards through the book to try to remember who was who and who had said what. Nevertheless there was certainly lots happening right up to the last few pages.

I would very much like to read more about Ashley, Hector, Barry and co, but I would hope that any future cases they deal with might be a little more straightforward. 

I am using this novel for prompt no.8 of the 52 Book Club 2024 Reading Challenge: 'features the ocean.'

Death at Paradise Park by Ross Greenwood is published by Boldwood Books Limited. I borrowed my copy from Culter library.