Cradling Death

Detective Chief Inspector Henry Peckover, full-time policeman and part-time poet, also known as Our ’Enry and The Bard of the Yard, has been more irascible than usual.

Just as well, then, that he is sent off to the jungles of Belize to track down a man with a nickname of his own, The Honourable Vivian White, full-time cocaine king and all-round criminal.

Because as it turns out, drugs aren’t the only mess that the very dishonourable Honourable Viv has got himself entangled with. Wherever Viv goes, it seems, there go murder, kidnapping, deception and an unsavoury mix of bad behaviours. With his partner in crime already lying dead in a London flat, it seems that the time has finally come to put an end to Viv’s activities.

What’s more, Viv is not the only member of his family raising eyebrows at Scotland Yard. His father also seems to have some sort of agenda … but what, exactly, is going on between father and son? With bodies and threats piling up in London, it’s high time the police found out.

Thus Detective Chief Inspector Peckover heads out of his London comfort zone, to the steamy jungles of Belize, accompanied by the fashion-conscious Constable Jason Twitty. Once there, the pair is joined by undercover agent Peachy O’Day, of the Los Angeles Police Narcotics Division. With Peckover’s laconic wit and intelligence, Twitty’s sharp insight and O’Day’s ability with a gun, surely they cannot fail?

And when the Honourable Viv kidnaps his own baby, it seems there is no longer any room at all for failure.

Yet as bullets fly and the body count rises, Peckover begins to see that almost nothing in Belize is quite what it seems.

And as love, loyalties and long-held grudges begin to unravel the White family, their lethal machinations ramp up until they envelop even the youngest member.

But as he is left (quite literally) holding the baby, can Peckover save the child from its own murderous family?

Praise for Michael Kenyon:

‘Hilarious … a plot that grips like a clothespeg’ – Times Literary Supplement

Michael Kenyon was born in Huddersfield in 1931. He was a reporter for the Bristol Evening Post, News Chronicle, and the Guardian, and has taught English and journalism at universities in the USA. For seven years he lived in France, and recently worked as cook to an American family in their beach palace on Long Island. He is married with three daughters.

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