Catch as Catch Can #MalcolmHollingdrake #CatchAsCatchCan

By Malcolm Hollingdrake https://t.co/3FU8Z3YsGg @MHollingdrake

Narrated by Adrian Hobart @adrian_hobart

Published by Hobeck Books https://www.hobeck.net @HobeckBooks

310 pages (7 hours 45 minutes) ISBN  9781913793272

Publication date 16 April 2021 (audio 31 January 2022)

Catch as Catch Can is the first book in the Merseyside Crime series.

I reviewed an audiobook version purchased from Audible.

The cover

Fits in with so many these days, a figure seen from behind at a waterfront, which presumably is part of the Mersey Estuary. Could it be one of Antony Gormley’s figures?

The narration

Excellent general narration that doesn’t try too many different voices, which is fine. Enjoyed the Merseyside accents which clearly of the region without becoming full blown Lily Savage.

On a couple of occasions there was a scene change during a chapter where a slight pause would have made it clearer, but this is a minor grumble.

Pete’s ponderings

Most crime readers when they pick up a novel are expecting a murder, usually the more the merrier, after all it is only fiction. The simple fact is it is murders that have impact, are usually shocking and have a perverse glamour in the eyes of some. In The Silence of the Lambs, it is Hannibal Lecter that grabs the attention not Clarice Starling, even though despite being cultured and educated he is still the baddest of the bad. Thankfully in the UK, even though crime always appears to be at an all-time high, murder is still relatively rare, with random killings and serial killings amongst the rarest.

Low level crime can still produce wonderful fiction if the author manages to capture the grimy and grittiness of real life in the deprived areas and sink estates. There are a couple of murders in this novel, but they arise through other crimes. It centres on the sort of crimes that plague many communities that if not acted upon can escalate out of control.

My review

April Decent is a fast-track graduate officer, already at the level of Detective Inspector, who has moved from her native Yorkshire to the other side (the wrong side) of the Pennines to Merseyside for her promotion. She faces a fresh start with new colleagues and settling into a new home, a coastal cottage with her brindle greyhound Tico*.

April starts has she means to go on, setting ground rules for her team to the annoyance of some, who perhaps are not fully behind the team. There is one person who she cannot immediately get a handle on, Skeeter Warlock. Skeeter is an intense, stocky woman with a piercing stare whose effect is enhanced by her having heterochromia, different coloured irises. These are two women who decide that they must earn each other’s respect and trust.

Metal detectorists (who are now starting to rival dog walkers in fiction) discover a washed-up mutilated corpse on a beach, along with a medal and a plastic disc. Not a great deal for April and her team to go on, but if he has been tortured then it is presumably for information, but what?

With any first novel in a series there is a balance between introducing a back story and keeping a flow of action and here I think the author has just about got it right. The series is presumably centred on April as the principal character, but Skeeter is so striking I can see it developing into a two-hander. Both characters are interesting and have complementary skills and personalities and it is going to be fascinating how their interaction develops further.

April is the more reserved of the two, happy with a degree of solitude, going for beach walks with Tico or working on her hobby of making stained glass windows. Skeeter may appear menacing, but she is more outward going. Her hobby is wrestling, not the ‘Sports Entertainment’ nonsense of WWE but proper grappling known as Catch or Catch as Catch Can, similar in style to Greco-Roman. She is never happier than when training youngsters in this martial art. I can’t remember the last time I read a novel featuring two characters with such leftfield interests, bravo Mr. Hollingdrake.

The story moves along at a cracking pace, there is a lot going on with a real sense of danger at times and violence not glossed over. The low-level crime is convincingly covered, with the scooter gangs and drug distribution using youngsters through county lines, working for a modern-day Bill Sykes. There is a whole stratum of people on the fringes our communities who drift or are dragged into crime and a separate sub-culture, where crime becomes a way of life. The lure of easy money, of getting rich quick, is like a drug, but all addictions eventually come at a cost. It clearly demonstrates that the escalation of these crimes leads to greater risks being taken and ultimately to danger.

The local environs are well used, the run down and deprived areas of Liverpool provide the stark grittiness, but then there are the more affluent areas and the Antony Gormley statues on the beach. These bold contrasts make for an atmospheric read.

Of course, Liverpudlians like to think that they are hilarious, so it is fitting that there are some good one-liners, put downs and nicknames. The gang taking names from Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs is the sort of silliness I can get behind; these are not sophisticated criminals. Then there is how Skeeter came to be so ludicrously named and her life of nicknames, that in the end makes perfect sense.

Catch as Catch Can is an engaging police procedural with plenty of action and a seam of gritty realism throughout. Looking forward to reading more about April and Skeeter.

* Tico a black greyhound famously won both the English and Irish Greyhound Derbies in 1986

Catch as Catch Can may published direct from the publisher here

The audiobook version that I listened to can be purchased from Audible/Amazon here

The author

Photograph (c) Tony Bithell

You could say that the writing was clearly on the wall for someone born in a library that they might aspire to be an author, but to get to that point Malcolm Hollingdrake has travelled a circuitous route. Malcolm worked in education for many years, including teaching in Cairo for a while. Malcolm has been happily married to Debbie for over forty years. They met in their first weekend at Ripon college through strange and unusual circumstances. Serendipity was certainly cupid on that occasion. Malcolm has written a number of successful short stories, has twelve books now published in the Harrogate Crime Series. He is also working on the third book of the Merseyside Crime Series which Hobeck will be publishing. The books introduce us to DI April Decent and DS Skeeter Warlock. Malcolm has enjoyed many diverse hobbies including flying light aircraft, gliders and paragliders, learning to fly at Liverpool Airport, designing and making leaded windows and collecting works by Northern artists.

Catch as Catch Can and Syn published in 2021. The third book, Edge of the Land, will be out in 2024.

Source: Publisher’s website

The narrator

Hobeck Books is the brainchild of author and broadcaster Adrian Hobart and publisher Rebecca Collins, and is based in a big old barn in the Staffordshire countryside.

Adrian has been a broadcaster and journalist with the BBC for twenty-five years, and is an audiobook narrator, filmmaker and a writer. 

Source: publisher’s website