Dead Man Driving – Lesley Kelly
Two years into a devastating flu pandemic, food shortages are critical. The streets are full of angry protestors objecting to the government’s proposed rationing.
Policing demonstrations is firmly outside the Health Enforcement Team’s remit, but that doesn’t stop their boss sending them in. As the threat escalates, the team find themselves being drawn into a government cover up, investigating a terrorist cell, and tugging at the threads of a global conspiracy.
As tensions rise throughout the city and the nation, the stakes have never been higher.
I received a review copy from the publishers prior to taking part in the blog tour.
The pandemic crime series which began before the readers found themselves living through a real-life pandemic. It was a fascinating idea before 202o and with the benefit of hindsight it is quite remarkable which elements of this “fiction” came to pass. Lesley Kelly’s post-pandemic Edinburgh is a fascinating city where lives have been devastated, people are trying to retain some semblance of normal and the political situation is at the “eggshell deplomacy” where the pandemic and the fallout is casting a huge shadow over everything.
This is the fifth book in the Health of Strangers series, we follow the Health Enforcement Team (a decidedly rag-tag bunch) who are tasked with ensuring the residents of their area of the city turn up for the compulsory regular health assessment checks. Their roles aren’t popular and people are don’t take kindly to a visit from the HET so, as you can imagine, their job satisfaction levels are not high.
As we rejoin events in this new book things in Edinburgh are not going well, food is in short supply and people are taking to the streets in protest. As the police are already stretched the politicians step in and decide it would be a good idea if the HET teams also step up and help maintain the peace. For one of their number it’s a step too far as she is already threatening court action against her employers as she’s being made to undertake tasks which don’t fall into her job description. However, a new Team Leader has been appointed to oversee the HET and she’s a career administrator with no practical experience of life on the frontline – the rules are the rules and there should be no reasons why the rules should not be followed.
Unfortunately the rules are not written to cope with the discovery of a terrorist cell operating within the city. A van full of luxury food goes astray en-route to a grand function due to be hosted by a prominent MSP. When the van is discovered so too is a a dead body and that discovery will lead to the revelation of terrorists in the city. For Mona and her colleagues at the HET team their days are about to be filled with international terrorists (though has Mona already met one of their suspects?). They are also dealing with the fallout of their latest investigation which had revealed a rogue operator within their team and in the aftermath of that discovery there are lots of red herrings floating around and police investigations are hampered by the false leads which were left for them to find, old loyalties within the team and an overwhelming level of suspicion between colleagues.
What makes these books sing for me is the humour which Lesley Kelly injects to proceedings. Dark humour and dry sarcasm is very much a feature of Scottish day to day life and the dialogue in Dead Man Driving perfectly captures the tone you’d expect from harassed and long suffering public servants faced with unwelcome challenges on a daily basis.
I can’t begin to tell you how much I am loving the evolution of this series and these characters. Where Mick Herron makes incompetent spooks an unmissable read, this is Lesley Kelly making the misfits in government healthcare equally essential reading. They are hopeless, frustrating and occasionally blessed with a flash of inspiration and they are wonderful to follow.
If you’re looking for a new Scottish Crime Fiction series to follow then you should look no further than the Health of Strangers books. A firm favourite.
Dead Man Driving is published by Sandstone Press and releases on 20 July 2023 in paperback, digital and audiobook format. You can order your copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0C5GF8BGW/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0