A Body Under the Bridge, by P.F. Ford

I honestly don’t know why these covers work for me so well; perhaps it’s the moody sky or the murder yellow in the title, but whatever it is, here I am again, trying an unknown author by requesting an ARC. And once again, it didn’t go well.

Beware: copaganda.

A Body Under the Bridge, by P.F. Ford

This is the sixth book in the West Wales Murder Mysteries series, nominally centered around Detective Sargent Norman Norman, who works in a small police station in the village of Llangwelli.

While the story is narrated mostly from his point of view, there are bits and pieces from the points of view of other cops, and what seem to be continuing storylines from the previous books; some are about the relationships between the cops themselves, and some about things like funding for their small station and their position in the larger pecking order for the region and so forth.

As the book starts, they don’t seem to have any ongoing cases, or basically anything to do, until someone reports that an elderly man as missing, and then his body turns up in a stream near another small village some ten miles away.

Here’s how the blurb sets the story up:

Detective Norman is out of retirement and back on the beat in a rainy Welsh seaside town. Llangwelli might be short on sunshine, but it’s certainly not short on murders . . . Norman may seem a bit old-fashioned, but he’s always willing to learn from his band of misfit recruits.

A lonely widower. A body in a stream. An impossible puzzle.

It’s an ordinary Tuesday morning when pensioner Alun Edwards turns up at Llangwelli station. He doesn’t want to make a fuss but he’s worried about his friend Gareth. Every Monday, they meet up for a game of chess. But Gareth wasn’t at home yesterday. He’s not answering his phone — and he’s left his dog behind. He’d never do that.

Detective Norman searches Gareth’s cottage — and finds a woman’s photograph, torn to shreds and dumped in the bin.

The next day, the body of an elderly man is discovered in a stream under an old railway bridge. The name on his bus pass is Gareth Jenkins. But that’s impossible. According to the pathologist, the body has been in the water at least three or four days. And Gareth was seen walking his dog, just two days ago.

Norman is facing an impossible puzzle. And what is the secret behind the woman in the photograph..?

The blurb turned out to be the most interesting part of this book; the “impossible” aspect of the mystery is explained almost immediately: a neighbor saw someone walking the dog in the rain, in the small hours of the morning, wearing a hooded coat, and *the cops* assumed that meant it was the dog’s owner.

The narrative alternates between pointless chatter between the different cops, and the investigation, first trying to find the missing man, then solving his murder once the body is found. There is an abundance of unnecessary detail on some things, and absurd jumps on others.

At one point we have: “Norman…went up to the front door, removed the tape and sign, produced a key and led the way inside.” (Chapter 5) This could have just as easily been written as “Norman entered the house”; the longer phrasing doesn’t tell us anything important about either the case or the cop. In contrast, later in the book a scene ends with the line “Norman had to check something first”, and in the next scene, he drops key information while interviewing a witness-cum-suspect.

Speaking of which, the cops seem to take everything they are told at face value, even from people who have already lied to them; and despite the marvels of technology, they don’t use their cell phones to fact-check anything, or even call the station to have someone there do more digging for them. Instead, they physically go back to have tedious, in person conversations about everything.

In one conversation between the putative protagonist and his immediate superior, Norman says he supposes that she didn’t get along with her just-dead father, because she never mentioned him to Norman; she replies with something along the lines of, “I guess then you can deduce that we didn’t get along, since I never mentioned him to you”; then he says again, “I guess it was a bad relationship, since you didn’t mention him to me ever”, and she agrees, again, that yes, it was a bad relationship.

And no, I am not exaggerating; each character said the same thing to each other twice. Worse, that was not the only instance of this kind of circular exchange; the group conversations as they discuss what they know, what they need to find out, etc., often include little sidebars that lead nowhere and add nothing.

When the toxicology report shows high levels of warfarin in the victim’s body, there is a group discussion where one cop says that it was used in rat poison; then another one says that regulations have changed, and it’s no longer used for that. Another cop explains that it’s a blood thinner, and someone else says that the victim didn’t have a prescription for it–so the first cop asks if it was in rat poison after all, so the second cop reiterates that no rat poison contains warfarin so that couldn’t be it.

Things are introduced, made much of, and then dropped entirely.

At one point, Norman and his DI talk about the potential closure of the Llangwelli station–which of course would mean upheaval for every cop employed there. Then it’s never mentioned again.

Or the victim’s dog, which should have been sent to animal control (or animal welfare, whatever it’s called over there), being taken in by Norman and Faye, to whom he refers to as his partner. At least two people tell him that he shouldn’t have done that because a) not procedure, and b) if they find any family, he’ll have to turn the dog over to them. Then a sister to the victims turns up, and no one brings up ownership of the dog, or even where it is, again.

Eventually, the cops solve the case; the book ends with an arrest, but there is neither a climax or aftermath; the tone and style throughout never changes. By the time I was done reading, I didn’t care for who did what, or for any of the cops.

And here’s the main thing: in reality, it’s likely that cops are just this bumbling if not worse, but fiction is supposed to be consistent, coherent and, more than anything else, entertaining. This book was none of these things.

A Body Under the Bridge gets a 5.00 out of 10