Because I’m either caught up with my contemporary British and Irish police procedural series or reading them slowly, I’ve been trying out the first couple books of some other longer series to see if any of them can slot into that role. When I’m trialing a series or new author, I almost always try at least 2 books unless I really bounce off the style or content. After a few misses, for now I’ve settled on Jane Casey’s Maeve Kerrigan series, which debuted in 2010. I learned about this series from Cara Hunter's recommendations on her website! (Book discovery is hard and I love it when authors do this.)
The series detective is Maeve Kerrigan, who has Irish-heritage but is British-born, as she starts as a junior Detective Constable working in London under a legendary superintendent who is amusingly named (and worshiped as by the inexperienced Maeve) Godly. Book two and three pair her with a senior colleague, DI Josh Derwent, and looking ahead I understand that this is a pairing that will last (which I’m dubious about since I don’t like the character, but willing to see where it goes).
Of the three, book one was definitely the weakest and in a style that seems not representative of the series if they continue in the vein of books 2 and 3. This validates my commitment to trying at least two in a series unless something really puts me off. The Burning sees Maeve newly elevated to Godly’s team as they chase a serial killer, only to be seemingly relegated to semi-independently focusing on just one of the cases in the series. As Maeve looks closer and closer, the case reveals itself to be a discrete murder done up as a copycat killing.
Here are some pros and cons I had with Book 1, The Burning:
+ Strong narration (audio and style): The Burning had multiple narrators who were read by multiple people in the audiobook. All were good, but I particularly liked the voice of main character Maeve, Caroline Lennon. I immediately took to both Lennon and the character of Maeve, who feels like she has both a distinct personality and a strong point of view. She feels realistic and human instead of just a character, and her voice–as written and as brought to life by Lennon–was immediately my favorite part of Book 1.
++ Early career detective: I like that Maeve is relatively early in her career, and that the reader journeys with her both on positive and negative aspects of the job. We see her being mentored and getting experience with new aspects of detection, like attending her first postmortem. We also see her rankling against sexism and xenophobia and struggling to balance her ambition and drive with life and relationships. I hadn’t realized how much I would enjoy this journey until I encountered it, but I guess I’ve been reading a lot of books featuring true detectives lately and forgot that I enjoy the workplace and interpersonal element of the police procedural sub-genre.
+ A Bit of Romance: Like Poirot, I enjoy a bit of romance sometimes! Just not to the point where the tropes of mystery give way to those of the romance genre. For the most part, I liked the balance that Casey strikes in the first three Maeve Kerrigan books. In book one, Maeve is in the last death throes of a failing relationship and maintaining a mutual workplace flirtation with another DC. Both in this book and subsequent ones, I like that romance is used for character development for Maeve: she's pretty bad at being in relationships, and I love that about her! For all the emotional acuity that she shows at work, Casey writes Maeve to be wary of commitment and loss of control, all too willing to think the worst of her partners. It lays the ground for character development that I hope will happen.
-/+ Many POVs: The reason Book 1 has different audiobook narrators is because, like many British procedurals that I’ve read recently, it has several points-of-view, including a person who is involved in the case. This is not to be confused with third-person omniscient narration, or an author that may dip in and out of many minds like in Christianna Brand’s Heads You Lose. Instead, this has a structure of alternating chapters or parts written in first person from the point of view of different characters. I’m neutral about this structure, especially across different genres and even sub-genres, but in mysteries, I feel like it often detracts from or destroys the puzzle and turns a book into more of a thriller. Which leads me to…
-/- Weak mystery: Technically, The Burning is a fair play mystery, which is unusual in police procedurals. Maybe it’s unusual for a reason. Book 1 is barely a mystery, to the point where I’m not even sure if the reader is intended to puzzle anything out at all. Maybe this book is a thriller?? I seriously don’t know, and it seems like a problem when a reader can’t tell if something was intended to be a twist or not. I don’t only read for the satisfaction of puzzling, and I do sometimes dip my toe into thrillers, but even beyond me literally figuring it out almost immediately, The Burning felt particularly weak in plot. If not for my tendency to give authors and series with many books a couple trials, I might not have kept reading.
On the strength of Maeve’s character and the enjoyable audiobook narration, I barrelled straight into sampling the next book in the series, and then the next. Not only did I enjoy Maeve’s company and find her narration compelling, I was curious to see if my issues with the structure and plot got better, and they did! I was happy that Casey dropped the split narration for the next two books. I particularly liked book 2, The Reckoning, which is a proper procedural, with the focus on the process of detection and none of the fair play element that made the first book over-clued. I wanted more of what I liked after reading the first book, and less of what I didn’t, and I got it. I’m particularly happy to see the workplace develop: more characters are added, existing dynamics are deepened, some characters who were interchangeable before begin to differentiate themselves. The plot of The Reckoning is also better, with a series of revelations and discoveries that make the book feel well paced, whereas I place The Last Girl somewhere between the two. While the first book was overclued, the third was rather underclued and felt underinvestigated. Book two also introduced a number of elements that, if the third is any indicating, will become overarching plots and recurring characters.
The series isn’t a straight line of improvement from book to book: maybe I was feeling a little fatigued by the time I got to The Last Girl, but I didn’t like it as much as the second book. I’m going to be taking a break, but I will be slotting the series into a regular rotation of one every month or two. I’m looking forward to seeing where the series takes Maeve.