THE CRACKED MIRROR
Chris Brookmyre
(Abacus, £22)

They are two worlds that should never have collided. The sweet old Agatha Christie-inspired amateur sleuth, solving crimes in the picturesque surroundings of a sedate Perthshire village. And the hard-bitten LAPD cop who plays fast and loose with the rules and has an unfortunate habit of getting his partners killed. Brookmyre brings them together in the genre mash-up we never knew we wanted, manoeuvring this mismatched pair into joining forces to crack open a fiendish plot that spans two continents.

Penny Coyne needs no introduction. She’s the archetypal Miss Marple figure, an octogenarian who helps out at Glen Cluthar’s library when she’s not sorting out the village’s truly phenomenal murder rate. Lately, though, she’s been noticing memory lapses, and has begun to suspect that her nephew’s suggestion of an old folks’ home might not be entirely misplaced. For now, though, she can puzzle over the curious matter of the invitation she’s received to a posh society affair. Why she’s been invited to the wedding of an aristocrat’s son is beyond her.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, maverick cop Lieutenant Johnny Hawke has been investigating a locked-room suicide he believes is actually a murder, and his typically unconventional methods have resulted in his badge and gun being revoked and yet another partner losing his life. But he has got his hands on a clue, and decides to pursue the investigation on his own time, following his lead to a wedding in Scotland, where another questionable suicide forces him into a reluctant investigative partnership with Penny Coyne.

(Image: Abacus/PA)

The result is as delightful as you hoped it would be, Brookmyre playfully pitting the conventions of the two genres against each other, the genteel lady detective aghast at her opposite number’s flagrant disregard for convention, the do-or-die cop frustrated by Penny’s insistence on sticking to the rules. Coyne is rattled by the intrusion of Hawke’s world into hers, particularly when a furious machine-gun attack impresses on her how much more visceral and gory death can be than the kind she’s used to.

Nevertheless, they have to knuckle down and combine their crime-solving talents now that they’ve been caught up in a scheme involving the inner workings of businesses owned by wealthy families – a movie studio, a publisher, a computer games company – and the enigmatic Crawford Nicholson, who seems to be the missing link between all three. Similarities between the supposed suicides are too striking to ignore, and they gradually realise that the plot they’ve been drawn into is bigger and stranger than they could have imagined.

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Brookmyre explores his premise thoroughly, dropping enough hints along the way for us to guess fairly accurately what’s going on long before the curtain is whipped away, but that doesn’t detract from the satisfaction of watching this odd couple in action and seeing the mutual respect and affection that grows between them. For all his toughness and bravado, Hawke is a decent soul who reads Douglas Adams in his spare time and Penny, despite being a fish out of water, adapts resourcefully to the tech-bro milieu she’s flung into in the latter part of the book.

However imaginative the concept is, and however cleverly and skilfully it’s executed, The Cracked Mirror is really carried along by the warmth and humanity of the characters; by Hawke’s need for redemption and closure and Coyne’s unexpressed desire for one last great adventure before her failing mental faculties put her out to pasture for good. It’s our investment in the unorthodox pairing that keeps us reading, and the final, poignant note that leaves the most lasting impression.