I found this book at Continuum this year. It was the first Continuum since Covid started. It was lovely to be back, I enjoyed myself immensely and bought as many books as I possibly could. Maybe it was too many for my hip pocket to cope with, but it’s left me with some wonderful books to enjoy. I’ve spoken about Robert New a couple of times, most importantly when I scribbled words about the book previous to this one. Called The Colours of Death, it’s the first in the series. This book is the second in the series, the giveaway is in the title.
Like the first book, this is an anthology of crime stories. Each story centres around a particular colour. I loved all of them, the crime and how it was solved were nicely done. I’d like to say these crimes weren’t real, but it seems that some of them might have been. The solving of some of the crimes seemed rather unique to my eye. I particularly liked the second story which includes the colour, violet. It seems Mr Kallang has developed a vision problem due to a botched cataract operation. Apparently, one of the bespoke lenses was dropped on the floor and stepped on. And this was repeated a month later with another lens. This left Mr Kallang with one eye with a new lens and the other eye without a cataract, but no new lens. As he healed up, so did his vision, not perfectly, but he suddenly realised he could see into the UV range. What would you do if you could suddenly see UV light and noticed lots of UV light where it shouldn’t be? Mr Kallang reported it to the police station and an investigation ensued. I really enjoyed this one, it sounds so improbable, but plausible.
And then there’s black. I jumped in pleasure and surprise when I saw this reference to Black 3.0 and Anish Kapoor. New has cleverly woven a big controversy in the art world into this story. And it’s not just a gratuitous mentions, Black 3.0 features quite nicely. Apparently, if you paint the walls with Black 3.0 then you don’t need doors because you can’t see that a doorway is there.
One of characters I’d love to see more of is Mug Punter. He’s a thief, but is also called upon by Sergeant Thomas when he needs help with a case. I’m not sure how this began, I’m sure it’s mentioned but I’ve forgotten. When I look on New’s website, I notice he’s already written specifically about Mug Punter. Brilliant, but only sold on Amazon, that’s a problem.
I’m hoping New writes more of these anthologies. I enjoy reading them and not figuring out the answer. I am beginning to see more foreshadowing than I used to, so it’ll be interesting to see if I can get the answer in the next book. And there’s an assumption for you.
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