In and Out: A Don Packham and Frank Mitchell Mystery

Whether he's miserably depressed or buoyantly cheeful, a day with the delightfully unpredictable Detective Inspector Don Packham is never dull for his partner DC Frank Mitchell - especially when it involves murder. When the body of Yvonne "Chalkie" Wood, a member of the Hollow Head Pub's dart team, is found bludgeoned in the ladies'lavatory during a night of celebration over a championship game, Packham and Mitchell accept an unspoken challenge from a clever killer. Though the victim had her share of enemies and each member of the team wished her dead, her untimely murder puts the detectives on a case of money, sex and secrets that requires luck, skill - and an excellent aim - to solve. --- from book's back cover

Mat Coward knows his cultural and has that rare talent of being able to reveal it to the reader better than anyone writing police prcedurals in England today. He knows the area beyond London -- the pubs, the darts players, the relationships between people who are and are not related. And his two colorful protagonists, the experienced DI, Don Packham and his junior Frank Mitchell, newly promoted (from the first in the series, Up and Down) to detective constable, are pretty much opposites. Packham loves drink, cigars and turning off the workday early. Mitchell, still learning how to interview sources and suspects, is concerned with the work ethic and with his marriage and new baby. But it's the characters the two cops must deal with that makes this procedural absolutely riviting. You'll be guessing all the way through, because this writer is also a master of slipping in red herrings. By the end you will have all you need, as do the two investigators, and you may well finally guess right. I didn't, but I was paying so much attention to what Brits are like today that I forgot to focus on whodunnit. This is one of the three best novels I've read during the past half year.