I’m going to be totally honest here. While I enjoyed Caro Ramsay’s On an Outgoing Tide, I also felt completely lost at times. The book is the twelfth in an ongoing police procedural series set in Glasgow featuring Detective Inspector Colin Anderson, his partner Detective Sergeant Freddie Costello, and the rest of their team. There was just enough backstory to let me into the story, but there were so many continuing storylines that I felt lost. Why is Anderson’s grandson now his adopted son? Who was the actual parent? Why is Costello so angry at her parents? I felt a little more clued in to the story of the conman who tried to cheat Anderson’s wife, but, again, that was an ongoing storyline. Those storylines affected this book, along with the new cases the team investigated.

Anderson and Costello work on one case into the early hours of the morning. The body of a young woman, a medical student, is found in the Firth of Clyde. They have a suspect, a man seen accompanying her from a pub, but just as they’re starting to get their teeth into the case, they’re yanked off of it, and sent to Invernock where a brutal crime scene awaits them.

Scotland has just been released from twelve weeks of lockdown after the virus, and Dennis MacMellan is concerned about his neighbor. MacMellan had been doing the shopping for Jimmy Pearcey, a man in his eighties, and Jimmy wasn’t answering his door. When MacMellan and another neighbor got in, he finds Pearcey in his loft, a victim of torture. Anderson and Costello confiscate films, and start their investigation, but rumors are already sweeping through the neighborhood that Pearcey was a pedophile, and the police just never caught him.

Both of these cases, while murder investigations, also show the power of social media and gossip to destroy reputations and ruin lives before the facts are known. Because the team was yanked from the case of the young woman, that investigation becomes background, a tragedy in the works. But, the second case involving the elderly man links to a group of people from forty years earlier, another murder, a child’s death, and a disappearance. It’s an intriguing case.

While those active cases go on, Anderson and his wife are still dealing with the problems stirred up by the conman, and Costello is caught up in her own drama. She found an elderly neighbor bleeding, and followed procedure, but, now the neighbor’s daughter is accusing her of theft.

On an Outgoing Tide is the first book I’ve read that refers to COVID-19. It takes place immediately after people in Scotland are released from the first lockdown of twelve weeks. It mentions younger people looking out for older neighbors, and that situation triggers two of the storylines in this book.

Caro Ramsay was a nominee for the CWA New Blood Award for the first book in this series, Absolution. I’d really start at the beginning if this police procedural series interests you. After reading the summary of Absolution, I realized there was even a reference to this case in this twelfth book. It’s not easy to catch up with so much backstory in a new book.

Caro Ramsay’s website is http://CaroRamsay.com

On an Outgoing Tide by Caro Ramsay. Severn House, 2021. ISBN 9780727890757 (hardcover), 256p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I received a .PDF to review for a journal.