The Sea Detective: Mark Douglas-Home

I included a small mini-review of The Sea Detective in my summary post for my June reading. Today I want to expand on that more.

This debut novel by a Scottish author is set primarily in Edinburgh. Three separate plots are intertwined throughout the book: a "detective" studies ocean currents and tracks the objects deposited by them; a female Detective Constable loves her job but has difficulty being taken seriously; an Indian girl who has been sold into prostitution endeavors to discover a friend's fate.

The story is complex but I never got lost or bored. Sometimes it is challenging to keep up with a story that moves from character to character. Possibly the threads in this plot hold together successfully because they do interconnect and the reader knows that. Each of the main characters has their own agendas, yet they all come together in the end. This is not a story with a saccharine, happy ending but there is a resolution, which makes sense and is plausible.

The characters were all believable. The story begins with Basanti and Preeti, two young girls from India, who are sold into prostitution to support their families. They travel by plane and ship to Scotland; there they are separated. Basanti is determined to find out what happened to her friend Preeti. Cal McGill is studying oceanography, and works in a network with others who are interested in tracking ocean currents and the debris that is carried around in the ocean. He is a environmental activist and is searching for the truth about his grandfather's past. DC Helen Jamison is an overweight policewoman who does her job very well but is not taken seriously by the Detective Inspector she is working with. She longs to be working in a situation where she will be appreciated.

This story has a great setting, the coast of Scotland, and some interesting historical facts about the area and the people. But primarily the strength of the novel is the excellent plotting and use of characters we are interested in.

This is my second book for the Read Scotland challenge, hosted by Peggy at Peggy Ann's Post. I am grateful that my husband joined in on that challenge also, and purchased this book, so that I could read it also.

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Publisher: Sandstone Press, 2011
Length:    280 pages
Format:    trade paperback
Series      Cal McGill, Sea Detective
Setting:    Scotland
Genre:     Mystery
Source:    Borrowed from my husband.