Dead Tomorrow by Peter James Macmillan, HK$120
Planning on cooking up a crime novel? You'll need the right ingredients.
First, a setting. This should be a city: some mean streets are essential. But avoid over-crowded places: you can't throw a brick in London, New York or Los Angeles without hitting a sleuth or criminal mastermind. Somewhere like Oxford or Edinburgh will look attractive in your TV series. Peter James' Brighton was a good choice, with its seedy glamour, picture-postcard pier and the sea, from which corpse after corpse is dredged in this latest novel.
You will need an investigator, usually a bit battered, with a problematic personal life. Interestingly lonely, he should be inexplicably attractive to gorgeous women. If you have time, marinade him for several years in police procedure. He can be hard-boiled and laconic, but nouvelle cuisine crime-writing favours a soft centre of empathy and a love of animals.
James' Superintendent Roy Grace has a girlfriend who works in the morgue and has a dog called Humphrey. The girlfriend has just told him she's pregnant, and Grace is over the moon. As detectives go, he's a New Man.
A signature habit or eccentricity is a must. It can be almost anything, from classical music or writing poetry to a taste for poker or cocaine. Probably not knitting.
