Blog Tour: ‘Dead Ground’ by M. W. Craven

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for ‘Dead Ground’, the fourth novel in the Poe and Bradshaw series of crime novels by M.W. Craven.

Thanks to Beth Wright at Little Brown UK for inviting me onto the tour and for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My Review:

I feel so late to the party.

This is the fourth novel in the series to feature Detective Sergeant Washington Poe and computer programmer Tilly Bradshaw, but the first I’ve read. Although I’ve missed a lot of the back-story of this fabulous duo, this is a great stand-alone read. I’ll definitely be going back to the rest of the series.

In this book, Poe is called in to help investigate the murder of a man found in a seedy backstreet brothel in Carlisle. However, the appearance of several members of the UK and US security services give Poe the distinct impression that there is more to this case than meets the eye. When other anomalies arise – missing evidence, vanishing files, lies and cover-ups – Poe and Bradshaw are left trying to make sense of a case which has high-level implications…

I loved the main characters – both Poe and Bradshaw are distinctive, quirky in their own ways, lively and engaging. And so funny – the humour in the book and the warmth in the relationship between two such unlikely friends is just lovely. In particular, I thought Tilly was brilliant – a fabulous mix of naivety and supreme intelligence – and definitely want to meet her again. Her questions (or Poe’s anticipation of them) about some of the more seedy elements of the case were hilarious, but I loved that this is part of her strong character and she isn’t diminished by her innocence in some matters.

The plotting of this novel is also super-tight. There were loads of things that I thought couldn’t possibly be connected, yet all the loose threads made sense in the end. Every time I thought I had sussed out what was going on, a new revelation or twist pulled the rug out from under my feet. In the end, I had to accept I was in the hands of a master of storytelling and just go with it!

There is absolutely no way that I could have predicted the route that this novel took – it was genuinely surprising and had dimensions that I could not have foreseen. In this sense, this is a satisfyingly twisty story – and the presence of the two likeable and engaging lead characters is the icing on the cake. I particularly liked the technological element too – Tilly is a genius in this regard and the clever use of tech made for some interesting plot points.

I’d recommend this to anyone who likes their crime stories with a dash of fun and quirkiness. Yes, it is a tight and pacey police procedural, but it is also so much more. I genuinely couldn’t put it down until I’d reached the final denouement (after several false ones!) Highly recommended.