Published 16th January 2025 by Bloomsbury Raven.
From the cover of the book:
Nobody ever knew what happened to the Brindleys. One summer they were there - flashy, loud and beautiful - and then they were gone. A mother, father and two children, vanished into the East Anglian night.Some said the family never made it home from the party; their speeding car thrown off the tracks and the four of them silently buried in the marshes. Others said they had simply moved on. For over thirty years, the case remained as cold as the freezing waterways of the Norfolk broads.
Until Cam Killick found the car.
An ex-marine and ex-SBS officer, Cam Killick's PTSD has made the return to civilian life a living nightmare. The only place he can find peace is underwater, where the world is muffled to white noise. As a cold case diver it is his job to scour the waterways of the country for the lost, the submerged, the drowned, laying their stories to rest alongside them.
Except when Cam levers open the doors to the Brindley car on the lake bed where he found it, all four bodies are missing. And Cam will soon learn that some secrets, once submerged, are better off staying that way.
A gripping, propulsive and atmospheric crime thriller perfect for fans of Ann Cleeves, Peter James and Elly Griffiths. Your new crime obsession starts here...
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Nearly forty years ago, the Brindley family disappeared after leaving a glamorous house party in the Norfolk Broads. The wealthy couple and their two children were never seen again. The police pronounced the case closed, after a woefully brief investigation, and interest in their possible whereabouts waned. Until ex-marine and ex-SBS officer, Cam Killick decided to investigate the cold case himself, searching the depths of the East Anglia's remote waterways in search of the Jaguar that never made it back to Brindley Hall.
The search is a talisman for the solitary Killick, a man who feels safest alone in the company his dog, Nala. The hours he spends in the water bring him peace from the PTSD that plagues him, but when he finally discovers what he has been looking for all this time, a lot of unwelcome attention comes his way. Unexpectedly, the car is empty, and no one seems keen to delve into exactly what happened to the Brindley family, except a single copper who shares Killick's passion for digging up the truth - DS Claire Rogers, who has been told in no uncertain terms that she must ask no questions. Killick needs answers, and this is about to make him the target for some very dangerous men who would prefer their secrets did not come to light...
I have been a fan of Parker's writing from almost the very beginning of his career, consuming everything he has written from the action-packed Ben Bracken Series, his gritty gangland Thirty Miles Trilogy, and his standalone novels as well. This is the first part of a brand new series, following the cold case investigations of a very unlikely sleuth - diver Cam Killick, who is haunted by the ghosts of the things he has seen in his former career as an ex-marine and SBS Officer.
The Norfolk Broads is an area Parker has written about before. I was delighted with the nods to his literary past with the mention of Killick being involved in a salvage operation in the vicinity of The Penny Black, which was the venue for a shoot-out of stunning proportions in the Ben Bracken thriller of the same name. The way Parker connects his books like this always makes me smile, so hurray for a new series in the same world!
The novel unfurls through the gripping adventures of Killick, both above and below the water (solid research on the diving aspects here); with heart-rending flashbacks to 1987 through the eyes of young Hannah Brindley, the daughter of the family. There are thrills, spills, bad guys a-plenty, enough action to make authors like Lee Child take a moment (as I have come to expect from Parker), and a mystery that really keeps you guessing.
This is powerful storytelling, with beautifully drawn characters that stir your emotions, and the way this book grips you also has a lot to do with the care and attention he gives to his psychologically damaged hero. Parker approaches PTSD with insight and sensitivity, at no time trivialising the toll it takes on Killick, or his journey back to some semblance of normal life. He builds a lovely team around Killick too, who I am really looking forward to reading more about as the series unfolds - it was great to have a strong, older female character in DS Claire Rogers; the alien obsessed journalists Gupta and Ferris are a joy; and I hope to see more of wily old Johnjo Tabernacle and his daughter Jess (who prove to be a lot more intriguing that it first appears). And of course, there is the delightful Nala, who you will fall in love with.
The fingerprints of an accomplished crime writer are all over this book. It is bursting with the experience and maturity Parker has garnered over his career, with entertaining echoes of everything that has come before, woven into an opening gambit in a series with the legs to run and run. It is also a stonking page-turner that begs to be read in a single sitting - which I most certainly did. More please, Rob!
The Troubled Deep is available to buy now in hardcover, paperback, ebook and audio formats.
Thank you to Bloomsbury Raven for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review.
About the author:
Rob writes full time, as well as organising and attending various author events across the UK. Passionate about inspiring a love of the written word in young people, he spends a lot of time in schools across the North West, encouraging literacy, storytelling and creative-writing. He is also a co-host of the For Your Reconsideration film podcast, and a regular voice on both the Blood Brothers crime book podcast and the Really, 007! podcast.
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