Three weeks until DC Smith's retirement and a teen girl disappears from a housing estate. The circumstances are reminiscent of the Andretti case, often referred to through out this series.

DC Smith notes the similarities which sets him on a particular perilous path.

This series is enjoyable because of the stream of consciousness narrative of what is going on in DC's head as he sets up an investigation and interviews. Also the members of his team grow and develop through the series. ( )

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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But now, change is coming, and change is inevitable.

Except from vending machines.

WHAT'S A PRIVATE INVESTIGATION ABOUT?
I haven't really talked much about the Andretti case and the book that Jo Emerson is working on about the investigation—with Smith as a significant source. I haven't talked much about Jo Emerson at all, either. Mostly because I wasn't really sure where Grainger was going with this storyline. It's the biggest case of Smith's career, and in many ways defined it. It's also the case that led to Chris Murray's father leaving the police. There was a serial killer preying on young women. Smith and Murray stopped the killer, put him away years ago--—but questions have lingered.

But now, a young woman has gone missing in King's Lake—so here in the last three weeks of Smith's career, he's pulled off the bench to take point on it—he's headed a search for missing girls—no one else around has. At a certain point, Smith starts to see similarities between this missing girl and some of those related to the Andretti case. Then there's an individual who popped up during both investigations. Suddenly the one man the police need to run things, the man who knows more about the Andretti case than anyone else alive is prevented from taking part in this new case. A logic that I don't quite follow, but am sure it makes sense to someone.

Smith, however, keeps working the case—as off the radar as he can. What's going to happen to him if he ignores an order or two at this point?

A MATTER OF BUDGET
It's realistic, I'm sure, but there's a lot of discussion about the budget for this investigation and what King's Lake Central can spend on the search for this teen. While it's come up before in this series—in almost every book—it's very prominent here.

It's also despair-inducing, while I understand that governments have to take this kind of thing into account—when a missing teen's life could possibly be endangered, to think that the efforts to find her are governed by a financial report as much as—even more than—clues the investigation has picked up is hard to come to terms with.

Except for the cost of forensic tests, I don't remember too many American procedurals hitting this point as hard as Grainger and other UK authors do (am thinking Rankin and Aaronovich in particular—even Paul Cornell's Shadow Police series). I wonder if that's more to do with the state of procedural fiction or if it's the way different governments think about such things.

SMITH'S TRAIN OF THOUGHT
One of my favorite parts of these books is when we follow along with Smith's Stream of Consciousness as he works through a part of a puzzle—or when he guides DC Chris Murray through something similar to help him build the same patterns. There's something idiosyncratic about Smith's thinking (although it never seems that way while listening, it seems like the only possible way to work through it) that is addicting.

We're treated to multiple sessions of that this time out, and I thoroughly enjoyed them all. Even when I didn't like the actions that Smith was taking after those trains of thought.

A NEAT CLIFFHANGER THAT TIME RUINED
This is slightly spoilery, unless you can do the very basic math. Still, feel free to skip to the next heading.

We all clear now? Last chance to skip ahead...

DC's fate is very uncertain at the end of this book—it could very easily go either way, and with this very clearly the end of the series, it felt like Grainger was hinting in one direction.

However, this was published in late 2018, in 2021—book nine of the series came out (and there are some indications that Smith was a presence in at least the first of the Kings Lake Investigations series that came out after this book--I'll be listening to that soon). This kind of kills the suspense for me—which is a shame, because that ending really could've gone either way and I'd have been going crazy if I listened to it new.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT A PRIVATE INVESTIGATION?
I'm so, so, so glad that we'll get to hear what happens next with the group from King's Lake Central in a new series. I don't want to leave this world and these characters behind. I got too busy last year to stay on my schedule of listening to them, but I'm pretty sure that's over.

This book was bittersweet, while the last book felt like the last gasp of DC Smith's career, this definitely is. The case was compelling, the search for the girl was tense, and the emotions of Smith's team—and Smith himself—were so well-depicted to make this a knockout of a book. But man...I just didn't want to deal with Smith being done. Police procedurals don't normally get that emotional for me—but several of these books have got me wrapped up in the characters' lives--and this more than the rest.

This is absolutely, positively, not the book to start with for this series—almost any of the others would be, but the first would be best. But you absolutely, positively start this series if you haven't yet. Jackson's narration is outstanding, making the audiobooks my strongest recommendation, but I bet the charm of the characters would be evident in the print version as well. ( )

My least favorite

I just reread the entire series. I had given all of the other books a 4 (will read again) or a five star (will read again and again) rating. This one just received a 3 (eh -- it was okay). I think that is because I found it the least believable of them and because the ending was ambiguous and too "artstisic" for my taste.

After my second reading of this one I'm wondering if my problem with it might be my sense that the author wrote the story for the sake of the ending, and then couldn't decide about it one way or the other after all?

The detective stories of the rest of the series were good to very good, but the real attraction of the series for me is the people. They aren't cartoons that never develop; many of them are people that grow and change over time making the books more novels than detective stories. ( )

Another wonderful book by Peter Grainger! ( )