Today I’m joining the blog tour for Dead Men Don’t Pay. My review is written with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on the tour.

Blurb:

MONEY. LOVE. POWER. HATE. It doesn’t matter the era, the motivations for murder never change. GERALD TRAINER is dead. His body abandoned at the dockside warehouse he worked at. The list of suspects is long and the motivations plentiful. But who was it who took his life?

JOSEPH WALSH & RAY CRIBBS are tasked with investigating the crime. But who is telling the truth? The dock workers all seem to have their own stories to tell whilst gangland figures try to pull their strings from the shadows. As pressure mounts from above, will they be able to find the voices that matter? Can Joseph overcome his own self-doubt? Will they catch the killer in a London set against itself, as the new and old world’s collide?

Death Doesn’t Care Who You Are. Murder Does.

DEAD MEN DON’T PAY is the first in a new historical police procedural series from CWA author Ben Bruce.

Review:

I enjoyed Dead Men Don’t Pay much more than I expected. From the beginning, it is clear that Ben Bruce is a talented writer, and his descriptions of London took me right into the centre of the investigation. As the novel is set in the 1960s, the author has done extensive research into what the area would have looked like at that time and what life would have been like for the characters.

The central characters of Dead Men Don’t Pay are Joseph Walsh and Ray Cribbs. Joseph is much less confident than his partner, but I enjoyed seeing Joseph come out of his shell more as the story gathered pace. Together, they make a really strong partnership and I felt I could root for them as they searched for the perpetrator of the murder. I was interested to see how the detectives would solve the murder of Gerald Trainer without having the more modern methods that are used today at their disposal. I admired their determination to get to the bottom of what had happened, despite several setbacks.

Despite the 1960s setting, there were several issues raised in Dead Men Don’t Pay that are still relevant to modern society, particularly immigration and racism. I felt that Ben Bruce explored these issues with great sensitivity and showed the issues from a number of different perspectives.

The investigation in Dead Men Don’t Pay seems quite simplistic, especially at first glance, however, the story still managed to intrigue and engage me. I found the ending came together quite cleverly.

I look forward to reading more by this author!

Dead Men Don’t Pay is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: