Dead in the Water by Mark Ellis

Thank you to Amber at Midas PR for inviting me to join the blog tour for Dead In The Water by Mark Ellis, published by Headline Accent in paperback on 19 May 2022.

Synopsis:

Summer, 1942.
The Second World War rages on but Britain now faces the Nazi threat with America at its side.

In a bombed-out London swarming with gangsters and spies, DCI Frank Merlin continues his battle against rampant wartime crime. A mangled body is found in the Thames just as some items of priceless art go mysteriously missing. What sinister connection links the two?

Merlin and his team follow a twisting trail of secrets and lies as they investigate a baffling and deadly puzzle .

My thoughts:

This is the first book by Mark Ellis that I have read, so I haven’t read the earlier books about DCI Frank Merlin, but this book can easily be read as a standalone.

The summer of 1942 has American soldiers arriving in the UK and the Russians swapping sides, both of which create issues for the Scotland Yard detectives. As a fan of historical fiction, I enjoyed the historical details included in the story.

There are a number of overlapping stories in this book including spies, stolen art, gangsters, dead bodies and the domestic life of DCI Frank Merlin. It does take a few chapters to get to grips with the different stories, but I was quickly hooked by the crimes being investigated and found myself reading late into the night to find out who the culprit is.

Happy to recommend to readers of my book review blog. I look forward to reading more by Mark Ellis in the future.

Author Bio:

Mark Ellis is a thriller writer from Swansea and a former barrister and entrepreneur. He grew up under the shadow of his parents’ experience of the Second World War. His father served in the wartime navy and died a young man. His mother told him stories of watching the heavy bombardment of Swansea from the safe vantage point of a hill in Llanelli, and of attending tea dances in wartime London under the bombs and doodlebugs.

Dead In The Water is the fifth book in the acclaimed DCI Frank Merlin historical detective series and can be read as a standalone. The third novel in the series, Merlin at War, was on the CWA Historical Dagger Longlist in 2018.