Franz Josef, Alan Carter

The third book now in the Nick Chester series set in New Zealand, this is a police procedural that uses sense of place and great characters as it's starting point, drawing them into nicely twisty plots that rely heavily on location to give them that little extra something.

The FRANZ JOSEF from the novel's title refers to a tiny South Island town which was built right on top of New Zealand's Alpine Fault, making it particularly vulnerable to devastating earthquakes, floods and landslides. It's also very exposed to the ravages of climate change, being a tourist town, that relies on visitors to a rapidly shrinking nearby glacier for much of their economy. As the inhabitants of the original town are in the process of being forcibly removed to a new location (concrete boxes gets referred to a bit), a body is discovered suspended in the glacier. Detectives Nick Chester and Latifa Rapata are sent to investigate, just as the town is cut off by floods and landslides, in the middle of a desperately cold winter, with a rising body count, and no obvious connections between the victims and hence a motive.

Reading this series from the start isn't really required, you could step in at any point, although there is a lot of backstory to Chester and how a cop from the UK ended up in NZ with a wife and young son in tow. There's also the story of Rapata, her family connections, and now her pregnancy. Only don't for a moment think that she has the slightest intention of that changing the way her career is progressing. In this novel these two central characters are combined with a lot of locals, which adds quite a bit of confusion - who can you trust / what are the connections / and how did a refugee man end up naked and dead in the ice of the shrinking glacier?

The balance between personal and professional is always well handled in these novels - giving a viewpoint of just complicated life can be when you're dealing with dangerous situations and people. The plots are always intricate and cleverly laid out, with plenty of subtle and not so subtle social commentary along the way - in this case the vulnerability of refugees is a particular thread that Carter explores with sensitive pointedness.

The earlier two novels in this series are MARLBOROUGH MAN and DOOM CREEK. If it's new to you then I can highly recommend searching out the first two books, if you're on board already then FRANZ JOSEF will not disappoint.