Cemetery Lake by Paul Cleave

 

Theodore Tate has gone about as far down in life as he can.  Two years ago, he was a respected police detective with a lovely family.  That was before the phone call that told him an accident had occurred.  His wife and daughter were hit by a car and his little girl was killed.  His wife was left in a limbo, alive but not responding to anything or anyone around her.  Tate lost his family and then his job when he went outside the law to deal with the man whose drunk driving took them away.

Now Tate makes a living, more or less, as a private investigator.  That is not much of a living as he spends every evening getting drunk to block the pain.  But he does get work.  Today is an example.  An exhumation needs to take place as suspicions have arisen about the death of a man who died two years ago.  But when the coffin is raised, the man is not there.  Instead a woman's body is in his place.

As Tate and the police investigate, more bodies are discovered in other graves wrongfully.  Soon four women have been discovered with no clue to whom has been killing women and using the cemetery to hide their bodies.  Tate feels responsible as the first occurred right after the accident that took his family and he had not done his best work back then.  He is determined to find the killer and put things right.  Can he do it?

This is the first book in the Theodore Tate series and this is my first read of a Paul Cleave novel.  He is a New Zealand author and his books are in the mystery thriller genre.  He has been called a New Zealand James Ellroy and his writing has that noir feel where behind the everyday events of life a deeper, darker reality exists.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.