Ditch-crawler reviews Dick Durham’s novel, A Tide for Drowning.

Dick Durham has been around a bit. He learnt the craft of the swatchways in his childhood, dabbled amongst old barges with various friends and even sailed aboard my sailing home, the spritsail barge May Flower, in his early teens.

Dick was the last trading sailing barge mate. After signing off of the spritsail barge Cambria when Bob Roberts sold her to the National Historic Ships Trust, he worked with a sail training organisation until settling down to college life to study journalism. Some years were spent as a Fleet Street ‘Hack’ in the dying days of that street’s many famous news outlets. Dick finally pitched up in the offices of Yachting Monthly where he spent a goodly number of years heading various sections before retiring, in a fashion, a few seasons ago.

Along the way Dick has written biographies about Maurice Griffiths, Bob Roberts and the Royal Sussex Yacht Club (A History). He has also written a ‘follow up’ to Swin, Swale and Swatchway, by H. Lewis Jones, called On & Offshore. There was also a collaborative east coast book with others.

But, Dick has made a departure for a new landfall: a novel.

Dick’s latest literary work is a novel: A Tide for Drowning.

The book is published by Amazon. ISBN 978-1-5207-7962-1

On a Saturday work party down at the Island Yacht Club, Dick mentioned his new book to me … I was intrigued, so I took the plunge – always good to help a fellow sailing author, or any for that matter…

The book is a crime story. It’s not so much a ‘Who done it’ but a ‘Why done it’…

Following in my good wife’s wake I have built up a liking for some types of crime fiction – usually of the older variety – those by people such as, Allingham, Sayers, James et al – and more recently have dipped into Tey… Christobel is an avid reader of all these works and more by other authors, not being afraid to give a stranger a go!

So, after reading the blurb, I dived in. I was hooked.

A woman has been ‘strung up’ on an estuary beacon. The tides are neaps, they’re soon to begin rising. She has six days to contemplate death … out at sea, yet not at sea: at low water all is dry.

I was soon drawn into a web of circumstances weaving a network of people into an interconnected tragedy.

Hervey is the main character, but doesn’t appear until later.

After the initial horror, the tale is set by a racy climatic liaison between two lusting women. One, the ‘bored’ housewife of a rich city cad, the other, a high flying banker’s PR executive. They met at an Alzheimer’s charity dinner at the mansion House … a threesome evolves, hubby wants both. They move onto a club … the wife walking to her car, is kidnapped.

We’re back at her ‘murder’ and meet Hervey. Earlier events are related and we ‘sail’ with him out into the estuary, with a previous victim…

The rich city type is in the same lodge as the ‘Police Chief’. A DI and his ‘side kick’ Dippy Daud, a refugee girl from Somalia who overcame prejudice to breeze through Hendon and become a Detective, are put on the case.

Characters are met and discarded but all have or had a bearing on Hervey’s life. He had a fraught and troubled childhood, an abusive father from a traveller’s background. Hervey inherits a run-down boatyard. His mum is in a home in her own Alzheimer’s fuelled world. Mum believes the ‘Germans’ have invaded … her captors, her carers. She gets hurt. The home, part of a group, is owned by the husband. Son is angry…

I felt some sympathy for Hervey, with childhood memories burning within. But, he is bent on retribution in the form of Calvary. Three have to die … the first was a bullying school teacher he re-met in salacious circumstances.

I’ve a deep love for the Essex ‘bad lands’ and the creek riddled marshes of the Essex Archipelago, which form the heart of this tale, and purred happily for they’re richly described to perfection by a man who knows his stuff. They’re Hervey’s territory too. And, here, Dippy comes into her own, drawing on childhood experiences of fishing the treacherous sand banked peppered Somali coast with her deceased father: she’s a competent boat handler. She understands tides and mud. She leads her ‘dippy’ DI…

For me, I feel that Dick is either Dippy or Hervey, parallels abound-.

The tale approaches a climax.

It’s a race against the tide … has it beaten them? Has its inexorable deed been done…

Wow. A grand read. A sound story and a deadly dose of suspense to set your mind abuzz.

I read late one night. It made me restless … I didn’t do it twice!

My favourite character has to be Dippy, a hero, without a doubt.

Any more Dick?

Dippy and the refugees…

Dippy catches her man…

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