I am very fond of the crime novels of William Shaw and have reviewed some here and here. Sympathy for the Devil is the fourth is a series which is set in the 1960s. I haven’t read the previous books and it would have been helpful to have done that because there is obviously a lot of backstory to understand about the relationship between the detective Cathal Breen and his live-in girlfriend Helen Tozer who previously was also a police officer. I still enjoyed the book a lot.
It is the summer of 1969, the tail end of the Swinging Sixties, and Cathal and Helen are living together in London. Helen is pregnant. The pair have a difficult relationship – Cathal is a kind and honest man, but he is old fashioned, often uncommunicative, and uncomfortable with the changes of the Sixties. Helen is headstrong, emotional, driven and is resentful of her ambitions being thwarted by her pregnancy, while her partner is still doing the job she once did, and she obviously still misses.
The novel begins with the body of Brian Jones, from the Rolling Stones, being discovered in his swimming pool. Helen and Cathal are at the Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park, held just after his death, and Helen becomes intrigued by the things she hears and wants to investigate. Meanwhile, Cathal has a new case, when the body of a sex worker, nicknamed ‘Julie Teenager’ is found. She had some influential and wealthy clients who visited the woman because she adopted a little girl persona which they found attractive and sexy.
The author immerses us in the 1960s with references to events of the time and especially the pop music of the era. There is a lot more interest in the death of the sex worker than would be normal and Cathal finds himself mislead, lied to and under pressure to close the case. Of course this makes him more determined than ever to find out what has happened and, maybe, how the death of the popstar is part of the same picture. Helen also investigates while negotiating the end of her pregnancy.
The atmosphere of the times is well portrayed and the author creates believable characters and an interesting plot. I shall now seek out others in this series and try to read them in the intended order.
Anne Is Reading 