Brothers’ Tears

In Gregson’s low-key 17th British procedural featuring Det. Chief Insp. “Percy” Peach (after 2012’s Dusty Death), former internationally known Irish rugby player Jim O’Connor, now a successful Lancashire businessman, is shot in the head while attending a dinner in his honor. Since O’Connor’s interests include prostitution, gambling, and drugs, Peach and Sgt. Clyde Northcott know where to focus their inquiries and an arrest is quickly made. Case solved? Hardly. Several days later O’Connor’s younger brother, Dominic, is found strangled in his home office. Is there a connection? A widening investigation that includes painstaking interviews with spouses, personal assistants, and business associates reveals, in addition to an astonishing number of adulterers, a possible Irish connection. The appeal of this mild story lies in the interplay between such memorable characters as Northcott, laconic yet intimidating; Det. Sgt. Lucy Peach, Peach’s shrewd, competent, and sensuous wife; and Peach’s superior, the thick-witted and egotistical Superintendent Tucker, on whom all irony is lost. (Aug.)