“Swing, Swing Together” by Peter Lovesey

As three men with a dog travel along the Thames in a boat faithfully following the route taken by the characters of “Three Men in a Boat” by Jerome K. Jerome, Sergeant Cribb follows them. They are his chief suspects in the murder of a tramp. Accompanied by Constable Thackeray, Constable Hardy and a young principal witness, Miss Harriet Shaw, he travels by boat, by cab, by steamer and by train, only to find out that his investigation as not going to be as simple as he expected. He’ll need Miss Shaw’s assistance to succeed this time – she is shrewd enough to be a plain-clothes detective herself, only in those Victorian days nobody in England heard about policewomen. But she gives the Sergeant a very useful tip.

At the start of the novel Harriet is dared by two other girls at the college to break bounds in the most shocking manner – go bathe in the Thames at night, in the nude. Thsi eventually made her the principal witness – but will Harriet face expulsion for her conduct?

That’s to be decided later; for now, she is committed to the care of Sergeant Cribb and the two Constables. They have promised solemnly to keep her safe.

Unlike in “A Case of Spirits” we meet a few pleasant enough characters in this book. Harriet herself is rather a dear, at once brave and brainy. Her way of describing people – by means of comparing them to gulfs and islands, explained by her passion for geography – was enough to endear her to Sergeant Cribb, I think, for he is unusually (for him) sweet to her througout the rest of the book. Constable Hardy is an admirable fellow too, even though Harriet fails to appreciate him at first. But we also get our fair share of pretty disgusting types as the book proceeds. But Peter Lovesey approaches the disgusting with humour, which, of course, makes it all quite agreeable.

It’s a very easy to read book, written in a light-hearted, cheerful manner. That’s the way Peter Lovesey writes, I’m starting to realise – quite unlike the gloomy, rough style of other modern English writers, like Ruth Rendell or Ian Rankin. These books are sure to cheer the reader up. If you like being cheered up rather than persuaded that life is not really worth it, this book is for you.