Death's Head

Jonathan Ross in his Detective Superintendent George Roger series almost always tells an engrossing story, and this one is no exception. His narrative whips along and keeps you hopping until the final clever twist. It's a very cunning story indeed in which the British detective takes a few liberties with the laws he's enforcing. A bum, albeit a cultured tramp, finds a body in a churchyard. Upon investigation the corpse disappears. Is the gentleman hallucinating? This leads pipe-smoking Rogers into a witness labyrinth in which, as usual, he sweats a lot, gets his clothes rumpled and goes until he nearly drops; his cases are carried out in a pressure cooker atmosphere. Of one witness he thinks, "She had a mouth like a paper shredder, and he kept putting his hand into it." He keeps a sexy female suspect at bay while having an affair with his lusty female pathologist. Rogers's sleepless, non-stop investigations often involve a too graphic and decidedly distasteful autopsy, perhaps because ex-cop Ross has a somewhat jaundiced, cynical view of the world. Enter this fictional world and be drawn into a fascinating place where law and libido clash.