A Cast of Falcons: A Birder Murder Mystery

I love this mystery series that combines ornithology with police procedure and a lead detective who is Canadian even though the action takes place in Britan. In this third book we learn some more of the back story of Domenic Jejeune, the aforesaid Canadian detective. And we get to meet his older brother, Damian.When an unidentified man's body is found at the base of a mountain in Scotland with a bird book that has Domenic Jejeune's name in it, Domenic immediately drives to Scotland even though there has been a gruesome murder on his patch in Norfolk. This puts his second in command, Sergeant Danny Maik, in charge of the murder of Philip Wayland. Wayland was a researcher at the nearby university looking into ways to sequester carbon for long term storage. However he was found on a public footpath just outside of his previous workplace, The Old Dairy, a research facility also looking into carbon storage which was funded by a Saudi prince. Sergeant Maik is trying his best to gain an insight into a motive for the death and find the perpetrator but he badly misses DCI Jejeune. Meanwhile Jejeune knows his brother, Damian, must have left the book on the dead man's body and he is using the excuse of helping the Scottish authorities to come to the aid of his brother. Damian has been in hiding from the Colombian justice system for some time and with this book we finally learn why. Despite the risk to his career Dominic takes Damian back to Norfolk with him when he returns. Damian is supposed to stay in hiding at Domenic's house for no more than a week but he leaves occasionally and always seems to make himself conspicuous, once by identifying a rare bird and once by meeting with a mysterious woman who might be involved with transporting wild falcons to Kazakh. Once Domenic is back on the scene in Norfolk he applies himself to solving the murder but then another mysterious death occurs. Darla Doherty was in charge of the Saudi prince's gyrfalcons at Old Dairy and was dating a police officer who seemed quite smitten with her. She confided to him that she was afraid and then she was found dead, apparently an accident resulting from a gyrfalcon's talon slicing her carotid artery as it came in to land. At the end Domenic solves the murder but he is unable to help his brother and Damian disappears from Norfolk. Perhaps we'll meet again.

This book was a great disappointment, and I read only a quarter of it before deciding I have only so many hours to give a book that was so irritating and unrewarding. The story is disjointed, and any rhythm pr suspense achieved is repeatedly disrupted by either unnecessary details about the characters' bird watching or belly-button gazing as characters rehash each bit of minutiae they observe in the behavior of suspects and co-workers alike. For suspense, this book was a loser.

Another good birder murder mystery, but a bit too complex for its own good; a myriad of possibilites made the story drag through many parts, and at the end there were loose ends that I felt should have been incorporated into the final story.One of Steve Burrows’ strengths is being able to write about human nature. I think Hemingway could write like that. Gabriel Garcia Marquez definitely could. There are passages in these books that are incredibly well crafted and they leave me stunned; I will have to go back and re-read a bunch of paragraphs just to make sure I have absorbed all the word.The bird stuff and how all that is incorporated is remarkable. I would think that even if you didn’t know birds or appreciate birds or even really like birds you would be drawn into the subject matter, read and be attracted to the comments, details, and delightful descriptions.I guess it is time to find a copy of the next book....

In northern Scotland one man watches another fall down a cliff face to his death and then retrieves items from the body.
When Domenic Jejeune of Norfolk police is shown the bird book from the body with his name on he can truthfully say he had never seen the book before.
Then coincidentally his brother, Damian, appears in Scotland and they travel back to Norfolk so Domenic can determine the murderer of a scientist. Is there any connection between the two deaths?
A NetGalley free book.

I think this must be #3 in a series and the characters were brought in too fast for me to cope with as I had not read the earlier ones..... but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the coincidences early on having recently driven through Ardlour, seen a wonderful video of a raven doing a barrel roll and an article in the guardian - 'Jet fighter' godwit breaks world record for non-stop bird flight. Yet the book was written in 2016. However few of the characters came to life and the plotting was a bit chaotic so I won't deliberately seek out #4.