The Dockside Mysteries, Books 1–10 (C.I.D. Room #1-10)

A body in the dock water. A town that looks the other way. And one detective who won’t.

Welcome to Fortrow — a hard-bitten port on the south coast of England, where the river Fort meets the sea and a smart, rebuilt town centre gives way to grimy docks, dockland slums, and a crime rate far higher than anywhere else in the country.

For Detective Inspector Bob Fusil and the overworked men of the borough’s Eastern Division, the bodies have a habit of washing up with the tide. Stolen gold, a body in the harbour, a house ablaze before dawn, a smuggling line reaching all the way to Spain — in Fortrow the crime never stops, and Fusil is the one who has to answer for it.

DI Fusil is a man whose hatred of criminals has an edge to it. Forty-one, tall and lean, colleagues say he’s too keen, too sharp — that he takes the job too personally. They’re right. And it’s exactly that sharp hatred that cracks the cases no one else can, even when it cuts the wrong way.

Working under him, Detective Constable Kerr is young, quick, and far more interested in women and a good night out than in paperwork — but case by case, he’s learning what the job really costs. Together they hold the line in a town where the tide keeps bringing the bodies back.

Classic detective work from an era before DNA, CCTV and mobile phones — gripping, twisting crime without the gratuitous gore.