An historical mystery set in 1943 New Zealand, featuring soon to be retired DI John MacBride, WRONGDOINGS is a book that's centred, unsurprisingly given the timeframe, around the fallout from war.
DI MacBride is a veteran of WWI service with the NZ Expeditionary Force, a man on the cusp of retirement, really suffering from severe burnout. The victim in this story, Marine Randolph Harrington, is a saxophonist in a visiting United States Marine jazz band, found murdered on the banks of the Oreti River. The investigation is a hard one, what with MacBride's only supporting officers a couple of old-school uncooperative detectives from Dunedin, and a young very inexperienced local DC. A crew not designed to help a man at the end of his tether himself. The other complication is an antagonistic and downright hostile Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the Marine commander, who values protecting the "good name" of the Marines over the solving of a murder.
It also seems that Harrington was a very unsavoury character, with a string of broken hearted women behind him and some very dodgy contraband activities. There's also some complications within the band, with different versions of events, character analysis and some obvious covering up going on.
There's a great idea at the centre of this novel, with a good sense of time and place. The characters are reasonably well executed as well, with MacBride and his personal burdens well established without being too overblown, and a victim who turns out to be anything but blameless. There are some issues with pace though, and the novel takes a long time to get going and seems to just drag for long periods of time. This is possibly because there's a bit too much tell in places, when some show would have been more effective, it's also possibly because some things didn't need to be gone over and over from so many sides quite as often as they were.
In the main this reader liked the approach of a central cop who is dealing with a mental health crisis as MacBride is. Of course these days we'd call it what it was - PTSD and overwork. A tendency to try to duck the reality of what's happening in your own head, for the sake of just getting on with it man. Makes you wonder how much intergenerational trauma comes down to old men sending young men to fight the wars that egos and power trips have started in the first place. (Nothing but nothing it seems has changed.)
Wrongdoings
1943 - Winton, Southland, New Zealand. Marine Randolph Harrington, the charismatic and handsome saxophonist of a visiting United States Marines jazz band, is found murdered by the banks of the Oreti River. Detective Inspector John MacBride is about to retire, and the complex murder investigation is the last thing he needs. He has his own demons, the after-effects of fighting with the NZ Expeditionary Force in WWI. The highly respected investigator fears he'll break down before he can solve the case with only his inexperienced Detective Constable and two old-school Detectives from Dunedin to help. Outright hostility and red herrings clutter their investigation but there's no bigger obstacle than Lieutenant-Colonel Warren, the murdered Marine's bullish commanding officer, determined to protect the reputation of the US Marines at all costs. Marine Harrington has left behind a string of broken hearts and stories of contraband activities while he was in Southland. His fellow band members offer differing accounts of Harrington's character, while the besotted young women with whom Harrington was involved have their own stories to tell. Will Detective Inspector MacBride and his team uncover the murderer before the US Marines return to their South Pacific deployment, and before MacBride's mental health deteriorates beyond repair?
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