As a kid, I liked the wordplay and banter of fictional detectives, from old movies of the 40s and 50s all the way to shows like Hawaii Five-O and The Streets of San Francisco. One of the memories I had as a child was seeing some actor with a voice box warning me on TV to never smoke. I didn’t know who he was until last year, but when I found he was William Gargan, the voice of Barrie Craig, and heard him in his prime, I realized there was something in his characters that carried over to the nobility of his final announcement.
There’s just something about detectives, those lone lawmen trying to make the world less dark one criminal at a time, often while struggling with their own demons, that makes for a mesmerizing read. I have to admit I have a bias toward a setting where the main character isn’t protected by a slew of law enforcement apps, and everything important is kept in a file cabinet.
I’ll be buying David Anderson’s debut Det. Sergeant Drumm book on Amazon soon, and updating this writer profile then, but in the meantime, here are an excerpt of An Indecent Death and a link to Detective Sergeant Nicholas Drumm, with a thought-provoking post on the occasional desolation of America, as experienced by a tourist.
From Chapter 1 of An Indecent Death by author David Anderson:
The victim was wearing a short, black skirt and a sheer blouse, also black, over a white tube top. She was shoeless. Everything was grubby with dirt; the corpse had not been wrapped in a sheet or plastic or anything at all. There was no blood. What emerged was a woman, likely in her thirties, who had once been attractive, maybe even beautiful, although it was hard to tell for sure with the contorted features and all the dirt.
Drumm was struck, as he always was, at how utterly devoid of life and personality a corpse was. Whatever had made this young woman who and what she was had long since departed.
Once the body was fully exposed, Sigrid Brandt got down on her haunches for a closer look. “There’s your likely COD,” she said, pointing to marks around the victim’s neck. “Looks like she was strangled.” She continued her examination, carefully rolling the body onto its side and then letting it settle gently back down again.
An Indecent Death centers on Drumm’s investigation of a seemingly placid elementary school setting. As he delves into the circumstances surrounding a seventh grade teacher’s death, a host of unsettling suspects emerges. A creepy janitor, an abusive spouse, the principal, and an unstable fifth-grade teacher all vie for top suspect. From the reviews, it appears Mr. Anderson is able to keep the reader guessing until the end, all the while entertaining with the detective’s personal subplots.
I’ll know for sure soon when I read it!
Follow the good sergeant at @NicholasDrumm.
