
A Forboding of Petrels, by Steve Burrows (Point Blank, 2022)
If you like British-based police procedurals, unconventional detectives, down-to-earth characters, and plenty of bird sightings, the Birder Murder Mystery series is for you. This particular mystery will take you to rural England and to Antarctica.
In England: A disciplinary suspension bars DCI Dominic Jejeune from involvement in any active cases. Not that there’s much going on except someone setting a few fires. Well, until they find a body.
In Antarctica: A research scientist is murdered.
Dominic gains access to the local research centre connected with the dead scientist. From the reports and sporadic contact with the expedition’s leader, he begins to trace the clues.
But when his findings become linked with arson at the local research centre, he’s skirting dangerously close to breaking the terms of his suspension.
This is book 7 in the Birder Murder Mystery series. Each novel’s mystery is complete. A reader new to the series starting here would be able to follow the plot but would miss the nuances that have built over time between the characters. It’s a series worth reading from the beginning, so I suggest you start with A Siege of Bitterns.
I love the loyalty that’s grown among these characters, and the descriptions of the natural settings. Like this one:
It had rained earlier that morning, a fine mist so gentle it had settled on the stalks of the grasses without bowing them. (p. 202, Chapter 29)
I also appreciate the way each book touches on details of environmental issues (in an organic way, never feeling like an agenda or a lesson).
Award-winning author Steve Burrows is a UK-born, Canadian-based writer with a long history of experience in the birding world. For more about the author and his work, visit steveburrows.org.
[Review copy from the public library.]