Published 7th June 2021 by Heritage Books.
From the cover of the book:
Help Me!Those were the words on the back of a woman’s photograph. And she vanished six months ago.
It’s 1948 and military investigator Ash Carter has arrived in Cyprus.
A gang has been operating for two years, leaving a mark known to police as the kiss of death. Is this something to do with them? And why ask him for help?
After a murder, Carter begins to realise this is personal. In a race against time, Carter must work out the connection between the gang, the missing woman and the murder before it’s too late.
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1948: Lieutenant Ash Carter, fresh from his first posting in Palestine as a Royal Military Police, Special Investigations Branch officer, is posted to Cyprus for a an unexpected layover, with his colleague Captain Wolfe. When Wolfe is sent undercover to the Lebanon to pave the way for their next posting, it is up to Carter to set up a makeshift office and hold the fort in Larnaca in the company of their civilian secretary Penny Cartwright, and not surprisingly the two begin a tentative relationship that promises to blossom into more.
As Carter tries to rub along as best he can, introducing himself among the various companies stationed in Cyprus and getting to know Penny better, he finds himself butting heads with some very unsavoury types who happen to be members of the local Royal Military Police unit - and he is unsurprised to find out from Penny that one of them raped her sister some months back, causing her to have a breakdown. Carter is determined to see the man face justice, but his superior Major Johnson seems reluctant to pursue the matter. Frustrated, Carter is suspicious of Major Johnson's motives, convinced that he has something to hide - a feeling that is confirmed when he receives a couple of strange messages purporting to be from Johnson's wife, asking him to find and help her, and he discovers that she has been missing for several months.
When the body of a man is found, killed execution style seemingly by a gang active on the island, Carter finally gets a chance to officially put his detective skills to the test. But it is not until Penny gets herself into a spot of bother, that he begins to realise that the threads of his separate investigations into the so called gang killings, Johnson's missing wife and Penny's predicament begin to crossover, revealing disturbing connections between the cases. With whispers of conspiracy, cover-ups and dark deeds, Carter is forced to question everything he has been told and he starts to wonder if he is really in Cyprus by accident or has been sent here for a purpose. It's time for Ash Carter to take matters into his own hands.
Welcome to the first in the new Near East crime series by Murray Bailey, which explores the life of Ash Carter before his 1950s Singapore adventures in the excellent Ash Carter series. Having consumed the last two Ash Carter Singapore books, Singapore Killer and Singapore Fire (click the titles for my reviews), I was really keen to get stuck into the new prequel series and I was not disappointed.
This is Ash Carter in his early days, still employed as an army investigator, and the mysteries he has to solve in Cyprus Kiss are every bit as gripping as the others I have read. Carter has a knack for getting embroiled in complicated situations, often by becoming involved with the wrong woman, but his tenacious character, personable nature and strong sense of right and wrong make him a very engaging protagonist. The pace of the story is pitch perfect, with compelling plotlines that come together nicely, with just the right number of surprises, and one of Bailey's agreeably confounding, trademark, twist in the tale endings.
As is also Bailey's forte, he has combined an entertaining premise that mixes fact and fiction together in an absolute page turner, offering a real sense of time and place by underlying his story with an authentic period feel. It was fascinating to read about the Cyprus of this era, before both independence and the annexing of Northern Cyprus by the Turkish, as despite having visited the island a number of times myself it is now a very different place. I found the attitude of many of the British military in Cyprus at this time a bit of an eye-opener, and Bailey does not flinch from examining their callous racism in frank detail, which is quite disturbing at times. But the Carter I know and love remains above all such nastiness, making friends with the local population in a way that gains him many an advantage over his more boorish compatriots. There are also some very interesting oblique references to Carter's time in Palestine and the goings on in Israel, that hint at the post WWII turmoil happening in the Middle East.
As a prequel, this works on every level, preserving the essence what I know and love about the future Carter, while filling in on the events that have shaped him at the same time. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am really looking forward to learning more about the goings on in Israel as he heads there in the next Near East book.
Cyprus Kiss is available to buy now in ebook and paperback formats from your favourite book retailer.
Thank you to Murray Bailey for sending me an e-copy of this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
I Dare You was the first of his books to be published in 2016. It was followed by Map of the Dead, the first of the series based on his interest in Egyptology. His main series however is the Ash Carter thrillers, inspired by his father's experience in the Royal Military Police in Singapore in the early 1950s.
Murray lives on the south coast of England with his family and a dog called Teddy.
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