The Sea Detective [Kindle Edition]

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.

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.

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.