Standing Still: An Anderson and Costello Mystery

A horrific fire on Christmas Eve 1989 opens Ramsey’s overly eventful eighth mystery featuring Det. Chief Insp. Colin Anderson, Det. Insp. Freddie Costello, and their colleagues in Glasgow’s Partickhill Major Investigation Team (after 2016’s Rat Run). Flash forward to June 2016, early on the day of the city’s West End Festival, a chaotic annual event noted for its outlandish costumes, floats, and marching bands. A dog walker finds the body of a young man stuffed in a tea chest. A hysterical mother arrives on the scene, convinced that the victim must be her son, who has been missing for a few hours. Costello is left to wonder: how could a healthy 19-year-old be abducted on such a busy day, and is this disappearance linked to other kidnappings? Meanwhile, a pompous politician is pushing for a quick resolution to the case, and Anderson is feeling guilty at having to put his ailing wife into a nursing home. The story moves along at a good clip right up to the finale, a macabre cross between a Shakespearean tragedy and a Hammer horror film. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Company (U.K.). (June)