Really a 3.5 but I'm tipping it up to 4 stars because I love the birding angle. I picked this book up because I'm a birder and I love murder mysteries, so I couldn't resist. I didn't expect it to actually be a pretty decent read.

I missed William Shaw’s 2016 novel The Birdwatcher when it was first published, but thanks to a reference made to the novel on a favorite book blog of mine back in August, I’ve now taken care of that oversight. And I’m glad I did, because The Birdwatcher is special. In my experience, the best crime fiction is characterized by well-developed characters and a vivid setting even more often than it is by plot – and The Birdwatcher has both of those in spades.

William South, a small-town English cop, is the main character of the novel, and the book’s first three sentences tell you exactly how South thinks of himself:

“There were two reasons why William South did not want to be on the murder team.

The first was that it was October. The migrating birds had begun arriving on the coast.

The second was that, though nobody knew, he was a murderer himself.”

Strangely enough, it is because South is both a dedicated birdwatcher and a murderer himself, that he is such a good cop. The man understands people and what they are capable of doing if pressed hard enough by circumstances, and his observational skills and patience ensure that very little gets past him. South, however, is not a homicide investigator, and he’s never worked a murder case. He is more the kind of small-town cop who gets called upon to be first at the scene of road accidents, burglaries, and noise complaints. So South has good reason to suspect that he’s already in over his head, but when the victim turns out to be his own best friend, he really wants no part of the investigation.

His new boss, the recently arrived Detective Sergeant Alexandra Cupidi, though, will not let South off the hook so easily. South is the neighborhood police officer for the Kent neighborhood in which his friend’s brutally beaten body was found, and Cupidi knows that he will be invaluable in getting her first investigation off to the impressive start she so badly needs. Cupidi, recently displaced from her old London precinct, is determined to make a positive impression on her own new bosses – and South is going to help her do that whether he wants to do it or not. But when the supposed killer turns out to be a man from South’s own Northern Ireland hometown, and is the very man who can most readily tie South back to the past he has kept hidden for so many years, he realizes that this investigation – and his new boss – may finally uncover all of his secrets. And he can’t have that.

Bottom Line: The Birdwatcher is brilliantly constructed, revealing little by little who William South is and whether such a good man, a man who has spent his entire adult life enforcing the law, is really capable of murder. Equally compelling, is the gradual development of the rather unlikable character DS Alex Cupidi, a pushy woman who puts career achievement before everything else in her life, including it seems, her daughter Zoë.

I knew enough about The Birdwatcher from the previously mentioned book blog to know that it is a prequel to a series even though it’s sometimes billed as a standalone rather than as the first book in the series. What I did not know, however, greatly surprised me, because the whole time I was reading The Birdwatcher I was anticipating reading the rest of the “William South series.” As it turns out, I should have been anticipating the “DS Alex Cupidi” series, instead. Of the three main characters in The Birdwatcher (South, Cupidi, and Zoë), the self-centered Cupidi is the last one I would have expected to become the basis for a detective series of her own. Those who read the first Cupidi-labeled novel before reading The Birdwatcher will have missed out on that bit of fun. William Shaw, though, is such a talented writer, that I can’t wait to see how he turns Alex Cupidi into a character I want to read about more than once. And that should be even more fun.

Loved the characters, the slang and surprisingly all the birds 😊 Great classic mystery but with a unique style.

Oh dear, page 3 "outside, the blue ford focus was parked in the street, engine running" half a page later on page 4 " good. she switched on the engine"

Details like this piss me off.

A double story in a way; a page turner but some excessive dialogue. Interesting bird (and Zoe) anecdotes.

I wish I had read this before starting the cuipidi series. This gives all the back story. The story of the past and the crime in the present that unravels it all.

With a notable change of pace, period and location from his 1960’s set trilogy- A Song From Dead Lips , A House Of Knives, , and A Book of Scars – William Shaw transports us in this haunting standalone to the desolate beauty of the Kent coast, and a tale that reverberates with the dark echoes of the past…

I should say from the outset that this book encapsulates the very best of European crime fiction in terms of pace, characterisation and location, drawing on the most recognisable elements of Scandinavian noir with its bleak location, sublimely controlled plotting, and the emotional but strikingly underplayed turmoil that Shaw injects into his central characters. Indeed the mantra of ‘location, location’ is the key element to Shaw’s beautiful mirroring effect of the sparse, wild nature of this area reflecting the feeling of emotional barrenness that lies within the psyches of his characters, and also draws an interesting juxtaposition between the natural freedom of the proliferation of the coastal bird community and the hemmed in feel of his characters’ existences. Personal isolation looms large not only in his main protagonist, William South for reasons that are slowly revealed during the course of the book, but also to a certain degree in DS Cupidi, following her relocation to the area. As much as South struggles with the ghosts of the past coming back to haunt him, Cupidi is seeking to make her mark in this investigation as the new face on the squad, and there is an intuitive use of her daughter, Zoe, to provide South with a path back to normal human interaction that he has so solidly distanced himself from outside of his professional career. I loved the interplay and shifting dynamic between these three characters, albeit with some hard decisions arising from their interactions, and the way that the slowly unfurling trust between them comes to be so sorely tested. This careful manipulation of human emotion, and finding connections, is a real strength of all of Shaw’s books to date, and I would say that this book is no exception to this real craft in his writing.

In the same way as Scandinavian authors so routinely return to reference the Second World War, Shaw uses the Irish upbringing of his central protagonist, Police Sergeant William South to provide this gravitational axis to conflicts of the past. I’m always interested in the way that the past dictates and shapes our present and future actions, and whether an individual can truly escape darker periods of their life. In the story of South we see an individual who has laboured under this shadow for many years, and Shaw beautifully controls the gradual reveal of the more shadowy and violent previous life. I found it interesting that Shaw had then cast South in the role of protector and policeman, and the sharp contrast this reveals between his younger and older self, which added a certain frisson to the story overall. It goes without saying that this also serves well in manipulating the empathy of the reader, and if, like me, the psychological quirks and anomalies of protagonists is a real draw in your crime fiction reading this will serve you well. Once again Shaw has produced, in my opinion, an exceptionally perceptive and sensitive crime novel, that raises as many questions on human nature and redemption as it answers. Intelligent and thought provoking.

i really enjoyed this. great characters, great storytelling. i will surely read more of Mr Shaw.