Swimming with the Dead

Guttridge’s sprightly sixth Brighton mystery (after 2014’s Those Who Feel Nothing) finds Det. Insp. Sarah Gilchrist ruefully contemplating her “late-onset promiscuity” when she gets a call from Det. Sgt. Bellamy Heap to join him at a crime scene. Roland Gulliver, a certified Channel swimmer, has been stabbed to death in front of the wonderfully exuberant Art Deco frontage of Brighton’s Salthaven Lido. On further examination, it becomes clear that Gulliver was partially drowned before being savagely attacked. Another swimmer dies during a six-hour qualifying heat for swimming the Channel. An autopsy reveals that the death was no accident. After a third swimmer dies, Gilchrist and Heap start searching for connections. Are the deaths somehow related to a campaign to save the Salthaven Lido from developers? Amusing repartee, well-drawn characters, and intriguing plot twists distinguish this police procedural. Readers interested in the complicated preparation and training needed for a Channel swim will be rewarded. [em]Agent: Paul Moreton, Bell Lomax Moreton Agency (U.K.). (Aug.) [/em]