- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Sandstone Press Ltd (24 Feb 2012)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1905207824
- ISBN-13: 978-1905207824
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 282,636 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Sea Detective
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Product Description
Review
'Raises the bar ... compelling!' --The Scotsman
The Sea Detective is extremely moreish, as much for its calm, open prose, a hard trick to pull off as for its solid storytelling. --Chris Dolan, The Herald
An 'excellent' mystery - Jessica Mann, of the Literary Review, who chose The Sea Detective as one of her five favourite crime books of 2011 Douglas-
Home expertly balances the introduction of a new kind of eco-sleuth, the awful realities of the sex-slave trade and an intriguing case of yesterday's crimes rising to the surface like doom-laden driftwood. - Christian House --The Spectator
This is a fictional debut whose plot grips like the grasp of the icy ocean that acts as a backdrop to the story. --Scottish Field Mark Douglas-
Home has created a compelling protagonist for his first novel. - A.P.D Lawrie, The Times Literary Supplement
This is a real page-turner where you can hear the characters, see the landscape and keep reading late into the night; you can t ask for much more from a thriller. -Rosamund de la Hey, The Southern Reporter Douglas-
Home is as good at capturing location as he is at making the intricacies of oceanographic science understandable ... An unusual background for a thriller and an unusually good debut to boot. - Inverness Courier
Twists and turns throughout... it s also beautifully written in places and expertly constructed. - Crime Fiction Lover
Combined with the intricate and fascinating storyline, employed with originality andcreativity, this makes for a highly successful debut for Mark Douglas-Home. -Gemma Cresswell, Mouth London
The Sea Detective is artfully plotted and a highly readable novel. Mandy Haggith, Northwords Now --
The Sea Detective is extremely moreish, as much for its calm, open prose, a hard trick to pull off as for its solid storytelling. --Chris Dolan, The Herald
An 'excellent' mystery - Jessica Mann, of the Literary Review, who chose The Sea Detective as one of her five favourite crime books of 2011 Douglas-
Home expertly balances the introduction of a new kind of eco-sleuth, the awful realities of the sex-slave trade and an intriguing case of yesterday's crimes rising to the surface like doom-laden driftwood. - Christian House --The Spectator
This is a fictional debut whose plot grips like the grasp of the icy ocean that acts as a backdrop to the story. --Scottish Field Mark Douglas-
Home has created a compelling protagonist for his first novel. - A.P.D Lawrie, The Times Literary Supplement
This is a real page-turner where you can hear the characters, see the landscape and keep reading late into the night; you can t ask for much more from a thriller. -Rosamund de la Hey, The Southern Reporter Douglas-
Home is as good at capturing location as he is at making the intricacies of oceanographic science understandable ... An unusual background for a thriller and an unusually good debut to boot. - Inverness Courier
Twists and turns throughout... it s also beautifully written in places and expertly constructed. - Crime Fiction Lover
Combined with the intricate and fascinating storyline, employed with originality andcreativity, this makes for a highly successful debut for Mark Douglas-Home. -Gemma Cresswell, Mouth London
The Sea Detective is artfully plotted and a highly readable novel. Mandy Haggith, Northwords Now --
Product Description
'Help me, please help me.' It was a young woman's voice, pleading with him. He opened the door, certain this was the biggest mistake of his life, and there she was, a feral creature in dirty clothes, with hollowed cheeks and scabs on her cracked lips. Her closest friend died three years ago, her body fished out of the sea off the Argyll coast, and she believes only Cal can help her find out what happened. This is not the only unexplained death haunting Cal McGill, a part-time PhD oceanography student with a macabre interest in floating corpses. Severed feet are washing ashore on Scotland's beaches and McGill wants to know if they're wearing trainers. The answer could make all the difference between accident and murder. Then there's the tragedy of his grandfather who was lost at sea, the mystery which sparked his childhood fascination for tracking flotsam across oceans, the mystery he's now determined to solve.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I loved this book and just wish it was longer - it was very hard to put down. So many areas of interest to engage the reader from oceanography and the impact of the Second World War on the Western Isles to the reality of the hideous international trade in prostitution. I found all the characters engrossing and hope we will hear more from them in the next book.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
New detective finds himself in deep water
Are we approaching crime fiction Armageddon? What will happen when our irresistible hunger for new sleuths finally collides with a market so crowded and dense it's surely going to blow?
There are a number of hurdles a new writer has to clear to get his thriller onto the bookshelves. Mark Douglas-Home is, of course, new only to the genre. Once editor of The Herald, he is a journalist of international standing. That kind of background gets him over the first water jump. Good crime writing requires a subtle blend of economy and style - the story has to power on, but the world in which it is set and the language in which it's told have to be seductive and assured. Douglas-Home manoeuvres his way confidently through that maze. He situates himself comfortably a little towards the upper end of a scale between, say, Dan Brown and Umberto Eco or John Le Carré. The Sea Detective is extremely moreish, as much for its calm, open prose - a hard trick to pull off - as for its solid storytelling.
You can have these components - a story to tell and a voice to tell it in - and still be missing the vital ingredient. Who is your hero? Surely by now we've had every possible take on the private eye? Alcoholics (nearly all of them), Catholics (Burke's Robicheaux), Victorians, ex-cops, ex-cons, gardeners, copyboys, journalists ... Now meet Cal McGill, a shabby young eco-warrior operating out of an empty block of luxury flats between Leith and Granton. He has a needy ex-wife, a family background he doesn't fully understand and the soft-shoe's prerequisite sense of justice. In short, he works. McGill is hip, different and believable.
The Sea Detective brings together unexpected strands of story. It opens in Bengal where young girls are sold into the sex trade. From there it moves to the leafy Peeblesshire garden of the Scottish Minister for the Environment. Soon, we're in Sutherland, where the story of men killed at sea at the end of the Second World War remains unresolved, reverberating throughout the novel and McGill's life and mission in particular.
McGill is an oceanographer. His mission is to bring polluters to justice. With his expertise on tides and wind speeds he can track back and find out who is spilling oil where, who is fishing illegally, who is dumping waste into Scottish waters. In the course of these investigations he finds severed feet washed ashore on east coast beaches.
Like a Scottish Lisbeth Salander, he's a techno whizz-kid. You know you're falling through a generational gap when young people work on two computers at a time. And like the girl with the dragon tattoo he is savvy about all manner of things. He knows, for instance, that the first thing you do when you hear about a washed-up foot is find out whether it is in a trainer or not. Makes all the difference, believe me.
Every seeker after truth needs his Moriarty. McGill's is DI David Ryan of Lothian and Borders' best. Although only in his 30s he's sexist, unreconstructed, suspicious of clever folk, especially women, and has a brutal streak. What's your Scotland like, Liz Lochhead had her Corbie ask? Douglas-Home gives us two extreme versions: technologically advanced, internationally minded, liberal Scotland battles parochial, reactionary Caledonia.
It all pays off. The various threads knit slowly together as the plot gathers pace. Whether there's enough work for an investigative oceanographer to sustain many more adventures (I dare say there is) we'll see. But for a first novel, The Sea Detective doesn't disappoint.
Are we approaching crime fiction Armageddon? What will happen when our irresistible hunger for new sleuths finally collides with a market so crowded and dense it's surely going to blow?
There are a number of hurdles a new writer has to clear to get his thriller onto the bookshelves. Mark Douglas-Home is, of course, new only to the genre. Once editor of The Herald, he is a journalist of international standing. That kind of background gets him over the first water jump. Good crime writing requires a subtle blend of economy and style - the story has to power on, but the world in which it is set and the language in which it's told have to be seductive and assured. Douglas-Home manoeuvres his way confidently through that maze. He situates himself comfortably a little towards the upper end of a scale between, say, Dan Brown and Umberto Eco or John Le Carré. The Sea Detective is extremely moreish, as much for its calm, open prose - a hard trick to pull off - as for its solid storytelling.
You can have these components - a story to tell and a voice to tell it in - and still be missing the vital ingredient. Who is your hero? Surely by now we've had every possible take on the private eye? Alcoholics (nearly all of them), Catholics (Burke's Robicheaux), Victorians, ex-cops, ex-cons, gardeners, copyboys, journalists ... Now meet Cal McGill, a shabby young eco-warrior operating out of an empty block of luxury flats between Leith and Granton. He has a needy ex-wife, a family background he doesn't fully understand and the soft-shoe's prerequisite sense of justice. In short, he works. McGill is hip, different and believable.
The Sea Detective brings together unexpected strands of story. It opens in Bengal where young girls are sold into the sex trade. From there it moves to the leafy Peeblesshire garden of the Scottish Minister for the Environment. Soon, we're in Sutherland, where the story of men killed at sea at the end of the Second World War remains unresolved, reverberating throughout the novel and McGill's life and mission in particular.
McGill is an oceanographer. His mission is to bring polluters to justice. With his expertise on tides and wind speeds he can track back and find out who is spilling oil where, who is fishing illegally, who is dumping waste into Scottish waters. In the course of these investigations he finds severed feet washed ashore on east coast beaches.
Like a Scottish Lisbeth Salander, he's a techno whizz-kid. You know you're falling through a generational gap when young people work on two computers at a time. And like the girl with the dragon tattoo he is savvy about all manner of things. He knows, for instance, that the first thing you do when you hear about a washed-up foot is find out whether it is in a trainer or not. Makes all the difference, believe me.
Every seeker after truth needs his Moriarty. McGill's is DI David Ryan of Lothian and Borders' best. Although only in his 30s he's sexist, unreconstructed, suspicious of clever folk, especially women, and has a brutal streak. What's your Scotland like, Liz Lochhead had her Corbie ask? Douglas-Home gives us two extreme versions: technologically advanced, internationally minded, liberal Scotland battles parochial, reactionary Caledonia.
It all pays off. The various threads knit slowly together as the plot gathers pace. Whether there's enough work for an investigative oceanographer to sustain many more adventures (I dare say there is) we'll see. But for a first novel, The Sea Detective doesn't disappoint.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A brilliant first novel for Mark Douglas Home. I couldnt put this book down and in fact read it in just a couple of days. The characters in the story are realistic and it is contemporary in its detail.There are a couple of story lines weaved cleverly throughout the book and they all come together brilliantly. Hope that this isnt a one off for this new writer.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Original and refreshing...
A refreshing, mid-length read, which delicately and deftly weaves two entirely different sub-plots, with one significant linkage. Read more
Published 5 months ago by C. McNicoll
Original, authentic, intriguing
Hugely refreshing to read a thriller that is not only beautifully written but avoids all the well-worn paths of the genre to offer a scenario which is authentically local to... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Belle
The Sea Detective
Bought this book from Amazon at a good price - delivery and packaging free and received the book quickly. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Lola
Scotland's answer to Stieg Larsson
Well written, interesting and complex, Douglas-Home manages to entwine related but different stories to create a very accomplished debut novel, full of suspense and unexpected... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Steven Georgiou
A big welcome Cal McGill.
Mark Douglas-Home has produced that rarest of creations - a new kind of detective. Cal McGill is an oceanographer with a severe distaste for the enemies of the environment. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Deep Reader
The Sea Detective
This book is gripping. So good you just have to stay up all night to finish it. If it's not in your suitcase your holiday won't be half as good.
Published 11 months ago by A Warrender
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