Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach by Colin Cotterill, a Mysterious Review.

Review: It's always a bother to decide who to tell when you find a head on the beach. I mean, there is no protocol. And when I say "always" here, I may be exaggerating somewhat because I can't say I've stumbled over too many heads on my morning dog walks. I'd seen body parts in morgues, of course, and accident scenes, but that Wednesday was my first detached head. It upset me that it hadn't upset me enough.

But Jimm Juree does the sensible thing, reporting her finding to the police, who seem singularly uninterested in the fact that there is a man somewhere missing his head, in Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach, the second mystery in this series by Colin Cotterill.

Jimm is an underemployed crime reporter in a remote coastal area of Thailand, and when the authorities make little progress in the case, she decides to look into the matter herself. But the head is only one of three mysteries she's decided to solve. A second one involves a pair of guests, a mother and daughter, staying at the family's Gulf Bay Lovely Resort, a rather grand name for a decidedly less than grand place to stay. Their vehicle is missing license plates, which is most unusual indeed. Jimm's third mystery is one of a more personal nature: Who has her Mother been sharing her bed with?

Readers new to the series will no doubt find Jimm's family a somewhat eclectic, eccentric bunch, but in this second outing they seem more real and approachable, more "normal", if you will. Jimm, of course, seems to be the most level-headed one of the clan, and though she has a vested interest in everything that is happening, she reports on all manner of odd activities — such as finding a head on the beach — in a down-to-earth, matter-of-fact style. But the story itself is far closer to "slice of life" than "novel of suspense", entertaining more for how Jimm goes about solving her collection of puzzles than for the puzzles themselves.

Acknowledgment: Minotaur Books provided an eARC of Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach for this review.

Slash and Burn
Soho Crime (Hardcover), November 2011
ISBN-13: 9781616951160; ISBN-10: 1616951168

Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach

A Jimm Juree Mystery by Colin Cotterill