In my opinion, parts of this story suffered a bit because there were threads, particularly in Cal's relationship to the police, that stemmed from earlier novels, and these were hard to piece together.

However the main story line held my interest. Max Wheeler's father is convinced that his 14 year old son who disappeared 5 years earlier was murdered by someone local in retribution for him reclaiming the lease of "The Black Island." Every year he comes to the island to mourn his son's death and the locals display their remorse. Wheeler's elder daughter moves to live in the local community but there is a lot of hostility. The Wheeler family has become almost totally dysfunctional.

Meanwhile there is a second plot involving the illegal taking of rare sea bird eggs and the two plots converge on the island during a horrendous storm.

The idea of a "sea detective" is an interesting one, as is Cal McGill's methodology in tracking tides and currents. ( )

Couldn't put this one down - not a happy tale at all - terribly, terribly tragic. ( )

Five years ago a fourteen year old boy disappeared from Priest's Island, an uninhabited place off the coast of Scotland. For his family there has been no closure and for the local community a cloud of suspicion that they know more than they will let on. Mr Wheeler has bankrupted himself trying to find out what has happened to Max and the last throw of the dice is to recruit Cal McGill, the Sea Detective, and expert in waves and currents of the North Atlantic. Meanwhile Priest's Island has attracted a different visitor, one more concerned with the rare birds.


Having really loved the first book in the series I decided to follow up with the advance copy I had of this title. Again the story revolves around a close-knit isolated community which carries secrets but I particularly liked the fact that the issues were caused by the incomers - the rich family who bought an island, the egg obsessive who destroyed lives. McGill is an engaging character, as is his police sidekick, but there is a real love of Scotland and the sea that permeates the writing. That makes the books far more that mere police procedurals.
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I love this series. Unless lightning strikes twice, it will be my "find of 2016." Although I didn't find The Malice of Waves to be quite as mesmerizing as the first two books, it's still an excellent read and not to be missed.

Douglas-Home changes it up a bit for this third book, and it's all to do with the villagers on Priest's Island. The settings for the author's books are wonderful. You can hear and watch the sea birds wheeling in the sky overhead. You can smell the salt air and be hypnotized by the crashing of the waves. The locations come to life, but they are fictional, and I like Douglas-Home's reasons for making them so: "My reason for inventing places is to avoid imposing a fictional plot on an island community that has a rich and interesting history of its own." Fictional or not, the landscape is breathtaking and an important part of the books.

While Cal's work with the tides does help to prove (or disprove) various theories as to what happened to the young boy's body, once again there is an environmental element to the story in the character of Pinkie Wise, a man who is obsessed with collecting rare birds' eggs. Pinkie has a small but pivotal role in The Malice of Waves. One of my favorite characters, Detective Sergeant Helen Jamieson, makes her second appearance in the series, and it was a welcome one. I hope to see more of this intelligent, fierce young woman. Both Helen and Cal are unconventional, complex characters-- one of the reasons why I like these books so much.

A strong theme throughout the book is how grief affects different people, and how it can rip families apart. I think I was so strongly opposed to the elder Wheeler's behavior that I completely forgot to keep track of the clues planted all along the way as to the killer's identity. I noticed them, but the lure of the story was too strong for me to put them all together. (Hopefully I won't have to turn in my amateur sleuth badge.)

If you love strong characters teamed with engrossing mysteries and evocative settings, Mark Douglas-Home's the Sea Detective novels are perfect for you. They are best read in order, so please begin with The Sea Detective-- one of my Best Reads of 2016. ( )

This is the third in the Sea Detective series, featuring Cal McGill, an oceanographer who investigates missing people who may have been lost at sea. He is able to calculate where and how their bodies may re-emerge. In this one he is called upon to investigate the disappearance of teenager, Max Wheeler, five years earlier, on Priest's Island, a remote Scottish island. He encounters the hostility of the local people, who have lived with being suspects.

I really enjoy this series of books. I love books set on Scottish islands or in remote places, they seem so atmospheric and this is no different. As with the last book, the focus is not on Cal, but on the other characters and I'm not sure whether a focus more on him would spoil the overall feel, but I would quite like a bit more Cal!

It's nice to have an investigator doing something a bit different from all the other books out there. I hope there will be more in this excellent series. ( )