Cambridge Blue

In Bruce’s assured debut, idealistic 25-year-old Gary Goodhew, recently promoted to detective constable at Cambridge’s Parkside Station, gets a chance to prove himself to Parkside’s seasoned veterans after the discovery of a young woman’s body atop a heap of trash bags on Midsummer Common. Like many a British police procedural, the novel opens with a flurry of activity and the introduction of numerous characters, but the action soon slows to a series of scenes, marked by descriptive passages full of precise details, in which the victim’s actions leading to her murder come into focus. Fortunately, halfway through, the pace picks up as the workaholic Goodhew pursues every twist in the case. By the end, readers will be flipping back to the beginning to suss out those clues that they may have missed. Bruce is also the author of two works of nonfiction, including Cambridgeshire Murders . (Jan.)