The thing about Deadly Autumn Harvest by Tony Mott is that it delivers the expected in an unexpected way. Here’s a police procedural set in beautiful but deadly Brașov, filled with incredible characters except one, and a serial killer whose pattern is underwhelming, then compelling, and then almost thrown away. Mott is interested in the patterns of life, but also the way in which humans just don’t do the things that are good for them. They are messy and unpredictable: this novel is too and it’s the better for it.

Let’s start with forensic pathologist Gigi Alexa whose twin allegiances are to her craft and her pet. No weird cat lady she, though. Fiercely single, fiercely attracted to the wrong men, she survives on coffee, cigarettes and her own sense of direction. I’m not grabbed, exactly, by her series of romances – though they are central to the plot – more arresting is the dynamic that she has with colleagues Matei and Vlad – they’re both love interests too but there’s also a clear struggle for power and respect because this is Romania and the patriarchy remains fundamentally fashionable. We’re cheering Gigi on, even when we think that perhaps she has gone further than we might have done we’re right with her. She’s sassy and sarky and oftentimes witty. She’s a great lead character and we want more.

Good police procedurals are occasionally at their best when we’re focusing in on team dynamics more than the details of the case. Sometimes it’s a bit of a drag to tear ourselves away from the power struggles, the trust and the hijinks to look at the actual crime. There are elements of that in Deadly Autumn Harvest. Part of the reason for it is that Mott’s style (brilliantly translated by Marina Sofia) is vivid, with rat-a-tat dialogue that’s keeps you completely hooked in. That favours the scenes with our police friends. By contrast, the scenes describing the various crimes are short, and told from the point of view of the victim. There’s little dialogue and we learn next to nothing about the antagonist. But he’s pretty clearly identified and enters the novel as a normal character. Mott’s decision that the reader understands straight away that he’s the serial killer sets a fetching tone of menace over the later chapters. And his series of crimes, once the pattern’s identified by Gigi, is creative and unusual. But we don’t initially get a sense of why he’s doing it and by the time we do I’m not sure that we care any longer. That last showdown should be 20 pages earlier and about twice the length. But it doesn’t matter because we’re more interested that our friends should win than in thinking about who they are winning against.

Often it’s a random act that enables a police team to move forward and there are some massive strokes of luck for our friends down at the station. We’re having a good enough time not to care: great things happen to great characters.

The Carpathian setting, the smoking and the sexism give this novel a sense of place, bordering on the past and this, together with the classical illusions followed by the serial killer, makes Deadly Autumn Harvest feel different. It’s lighter than a set of serial murders deserves to be but it completely owns that lightness. And did I mention those brilliant characters?

Thanks to Corylus Books for the review copy and to Ewa Sherman for the blog tour invitation.