Review: The Syndicate Six Murder by Geoffrey Osborne

Synopsis: A Jacobean mansion. A body in a chest.

Detective Superintendent Ralph Blade never liked Detective Harold Ashington. These two men had history. Ashington never forgave Blade for marrying his former girlfriend, Julie, and he was convinced the Blades’ son was his own.

Now Ashington is dead, murdered at the world-famous Police Staff College in the heart of rural Hampshire. And Julie can’t explain why she had planned to meet him on the night he died. Has a forgotten love triangle turned deadly?

But Ashington was a bully and a blackmailer, and widely disliked. There are plenty of other suspects — and all of them are either senior police officers or closely connected to the force. Then Blade’s prime suspect and one of his team are brutally attacked and left for dead.  Can Blade and his new second-in-command Detective Dorothy Fraser uncover who has motive, means and opportunity?

A pacey murder mystery set in a Police Training College where the victim, the suspects, and the investigators are all police officers. What could possibly go wrong!

Though by (my) normal standards this is a short book at only 164 pages, it feels much longer. The chapters themselves are not overly long though there is much to be gleaned from each.

I enjoyed the storyline and the fact that the author used a real location and object in which to set his crime. Bramshill was a world-famous Police Staff College situated in north-east Hampshire.  It laid claim to a large country estate, including a lake, and the Jacobean mansion where the recruits trained.

It is into this setting that we follow DS Ralph Blade and his team as they investigate the murder of a man for whom many will not shed a tear for the victim, Chief Superintendent Harold Ashington of Scotland Yard, was a truly despicable man, and as such, there is an over abundance of suspects and motives that need to be investigated. Chief among the list of suspects with a suitable motive is DS Blade and his family and for Blade, the motive, long thought buried in the past, surfaces and his family is drawn in. But Blade is not the only credible suspect - there are others, many others, including colleagues and the victim's own wife!

As with all police procedurals, the build up is slow and steady as we tag along with the investigating officers until all is ready to be revealed.