Pauline Rowson – In Cold Daylight

Review by show host
Well it was an interesting book, set around Portsmouth, Hayling Island & London. A present day marine mystery – wouldn’t call it gripping as they did on the cover.

Firefighter Jack, dies while trying to put out a fire in a derelict building. Marine artist Adam Greene, Jacks close friend, begins to wonder if it was accident or arson especially when he gets a postcard from Jack with a cryptic message on the back. Jack also asked Adam to look after his wife Rosie. Rosie thinks Jack was having an affair but when Adam digs around he discovers that Jack was diagnosed with cancer. Adam also discovers that other firefighters on the same watch had also died of cancer and other people with links to them had been found dead with suspicious circumstances.
Adam starts investigating as the police won’t believe that Jacks death was anything but accidental and finds himself accused of murdering the brother of his first wife and also finds his own life threatened. Alongside this we meet the family which Adam never speaks of, his estranged brother and father who have a tenuous link with Jacks death.
Political issues, hazardous waste, corruption at the top and a few twists and turns keep this book going.
However, for me, twists and turns yes but some quite predictable and at the end I didn’t care if Adam and Jodi got together or not.
Some of the scenes were a little ridiculous like:
Towards the end they were in a warehouse which catches on fire, now did this happen when Davenham dropped the lighter because if so I have never known a lighter to stay alight once dropped & also the fire took hold fantastically quick to the point where beams were crashing around them after 30 secs. If he had done it earlier then why did they not hear the crackling wood before then?
Then there was the disk with extremely damning information on it which Adam did not copy to his hard drive…why?
Why did Adam go up to his room at the b&b then go back down to get the extremely important file from his motorbike, why did he not take it with him when he went to his room …?
I wouldn’t rush to buy or borrow another of her books.