In Vino Veritas

British author Turnbull’s engrossing fifth police procedural featuring Det. Chief Insp. Harry Vicary (after 2014’s Denial of Murder) opens quietly enough when Andrew “Big Andy” Cragg, a minor gang member—really a gofer or errand boy—drops into a London pub. Over a pint, Cragg drunkenly confides to a stranger that he once helped dispose of a murder victim in a neighborhood south of the Thames. The stranger turns out to be an undercover Scotland Yard detective, who seizes Cragg’s beer glass as evidence as soon as he walks out of the pub. A young woman’s body is indeed found in the spot Cragg designated, sending Vicary and his team to their missing person files. One thing slowly leads to another, and eventually the squad painstakingly analyzes 10-year-old clues. Turnbull unobtrusively slips details of the officers’ private lives into the action. A lot of people do a daunting amount of work on the way to the satisfying conclusion. [em](Mar.) [/em]