Death Wore White

DI Peter Shaw and DS George Valentine are on the coast outside of King’s Lynn looking for yellow drums of potential hazardous materials when Shaw sees a raft floating in toward the shore.  Something about the way it is bobbing about tells him that there is something in the raft.  When it runs aground he removes his shoes and socks and wades out to it.  Aboard the raft he discovers the body of a man.

While exploring the area, Shaw notices a string of vehicles stranded on the road behind the beach.  Then a blizzard blows through, hampering the CSI unit from getting out to the beach.  Shaw and Valentine go over to check on the vehicles.  He checks to see that the drivers and passengers are okay.  One appears to have had a heart attack, so he gets Valentine to radio for a helicopter.  As he proceeds to the truck at the front of the string, which had been stopped by a fallen tree, he realises that he has a corpse in it.

Who could have killed the man as their are no footprints in the snow?  When the helicopter arrives to take the heart attack victim away, the young man in the last car runs away.  After questioning all of the people in the string of cars, they receive confirmation that the last car, a Ford Mondeo had been stolen.

The following morning Shaw is informed that the tree came down as a result of three blows of an axe.  Not long after, at low tide, another body is found in the sand on the beach.

The heart attack victim having recovered, but still in hospital, informs Shaw and Valentine that there was a young woman with the murder victim.  He provides Shaw with a description of her.  Shaw is able to draw her likeness.

Justina Kazimierz, the pathologist, informs them that the first beach victim died from the bite of a venomous snake.  Is there a snake out there somewhere in a warm container?  By that evening Shaw’s team was starting to find links.  But will it lead to the killer or killers?

Author Jim Kelly’s first mystery in the Shaw and Valentine series is a confusing plot.  Whodunnit, is a question that Shaw seems unable to solve because it would seem that nobody at the scene could have done it.  Could this be the perfect murder?  In the end Shaw is able to unwind the mess and reassemble things so that they make sense. A good mysterious read.