Skeleton Plot: A Lambert and Hook Police Procedural

The unearthing of a skeleton in an elderly couple’s garden propels Gregson’s exceptional 28th mystery featuring Det. Chief Supt. John Lambert and Det. Sgt. Bert Hook (after 2014’s Rest Assured). The two Gloucestershire police officers discover that the remains belong to a missing drug user, Julie Grimshaw, who lived 20 years earlier in a nearby abandoned building with other squatters. Lambert and Hook, seasoned pros who have worked together for years, question Jim Simmons, a farmer who recently sold the garden land to the couple and was around at the time of Julie’s death. Simmons’s efforts to show he’s a devoted family man suggest that he has something to hide. Some of the other people they talk to, each one a distinctive character with an interesting backstory, have long kept secrets, and no one wants old history raked up. Not a clue is out of place. Indeed, this entry could be a primer on how to write a police procedural. (Sept.)