Play Dead

British author James’s entertaining 30th novel featuring Asst. Chief Constable Desmond Iles and Det. Chief Supt. Colin Harpur picks up where 2012’s Undercover left off as the oddly paired cops once again probe corruption in another jurisdiction’s police force. Maud Logan Clatworthy (aka Home Office Maud) is dissatisfied with the conviction of Det. Insp. Courtenay Jaminel for the murder of Det. Sgt. Tom Mallen, and she wants to find those behind the killing. Iles’s anger over Harpur’s earlier affair with his wife, always near the surface, erupts into violence and threatens to disrupt the reactivated investigation. Nonetheless, the two manage to uncover an important witness and pry loose additional clues by re-interviewing Mallen’s wife; the couple who discovered the body; and Leo P. Young, whose pharmaceuticals firm Mallen infiltrated in an undercover operation. The lead characters repeat their usual amusing antics in familiar settings, but of course that’s a major part of the series’ appeal. Agent: Euan Thorneycroft, A.M. Heath (U.K.). (July)