THE DARK TIDE (2022) ***
by Simon McCleave
This paperback edition published by Avon, 2022, 376pp
First published in 2022
© Simon McCleave, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-00-852482-1
Blurb: Three years ago, DCI Laura Hart was the top Hostage and Crisis Negotiator for the Greater Manchester Police. Then her husband was kidnapped. Despite her best efforts to reason with the criminals, he was brutally murdered. Now living on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales, Laura is slowly healing. Then she gets a call: armed drug dealers have seized a tourist boat – and her ten-year-old son Jake is on board. There’s no other negotiator available, and the police need her to step up. With the life of a loved one yet again on the line and memories of the last time she failed still searingly fresh, Laura is living her worst nightmare. Can she lay to rest the ghosts of her past in time to save her son?
Comment: Having read the third book in the prolific McCleave’s Anglesey crime thriller series, and discovering a continuing story arc that had been running through the first two books, I decided to go back to the start. The Dark Tide is a straightforward hostage tale with its scenario echoing the one in which ex-DCI Laura Hart lost her policeman husband, Sam, in Manchester. Laura continues to experience Sam’s presence in a way that mirrors, albeit less frequently, the same idea used in the old TV series Randall & Hopkirk. McCleave blends the current hostage scenario involving a trip of drug dealers from Liverpool, a boat and a class of schoolchildren, including Laura’s 10-year-old son, Jake. This gives Laura the impetus to return to her negotiating role to help out local DCI Gareth Williams, to whom she has also developed an attraction. Familiar set pieces play out – an attempted rescue that goes wrong, pursuit on sea and land, relationship building between one of the hostage takers with the taken female teacher, Beth, and Jake, etc. – but McCleave maintains the reader’s interest through his snappy prose. That said his tendency to have to spell character thoughts out feels a little condescending at times, and his use of cartoon-like descriptions of action scenes continues to grate. Laura Hart is a likeable character and that’s what keeps the reader going. As a character introduction, this story is an adequate page-turner and leaves us wanting to explore further by including a story arc. cliffhanger.
