Review: Detectives Roy & Roscoe Mysteries Books 1–7

Tony Bassett, Detectives Roy & Roscoe Mysteries Books 1–7 (The Book Folks Crime thriller and mystery 2025)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/243115585-detectives-roy-roscoe-mysteries-books-1-7

Absolutely perfect crime novels

I congratulate Bassett on the publication of this compendium. I am a fan of his crime fiction and have read and reviewed several of the books in this collection.

His writing is excellent, his characters colourful, and his plots are always exciting.

What I like most about Bassett’s novels is the (what seems to me to be) realistic police procedures, the great characters and the great plots. The working lives of the characters are portrayed realistically. Bassett’s policemen have believably cop-like dialogue and avoid clichés (donuts, etc). We never lose sight of the people while the plot is gathering facts. The large cast of coppers and suspects all have inter-connecting stories, and we see fascinating peeks inside the suspects’ private lives.

Bassett is a master of suspense. We find out the clues at the same time the detectives find them, meaning that the pacing is comfortable, slowly developing, then a rush of drama. As in real life, some of the leads don’t pan out, which gives it a true-to-real-life feel. Not everything is done by our heroine; also as in real life, there are multiple officers involved.

We’re never given too much all at once, and usually about three-fourths into the story, just when it’s getting almost too complicated to follow, we are given a summary of the suspects, clues and alibis through the mouths of the police in a team operational briefing. So, we never have to think, ‘hang on, what was that clue back on page 23?’ Bassett is skilled at weaving necessary backstory into the dialogue. You probably get enough clues to solve the crime yourself, although I usually don’t.

I like that his main detective, Sunita Roy, is of non-Anglo heritage, making her a little bit out of ordinary from what we’re used to. She’s an interesting woman as well as police detective. Though she’s not full of herself, she has a keen mind, and when cracks the case, it’s usually because she has done a bit of lateral thinking that her bosses haven’t considered. The crime is always solved in some innovative way.