Good story, and makes me far more sympathetic to Pringle. Harrowing and sorrowful. ( )

Title - The Blue Girl (Murder Squad #2.5)

Author - Alex Grecian

Genre - Mystery, Short Story

Story Summary -

In 1889, London, Scotland Yard's newly formed Murder Squad is extremely busy. So busy that when a young girl's body washes up on shore, it is left to Constable Colin Pringle to determine if a crime was committed. Teamed with Dr. Bernard Kingsley and his daughter Fiona, Pringle investigates the death of...

"...The girl's skin was a delicate shade of blue, the color of a robin's egg. Her white dress rippled and her outstretched arms and legs spread out over the canal's surface, one of her hands resting on a furry pale frond of milfoil that stretched up from the bottom of the canal seeking the hidden sun..."

"...Of course. What do you think did her?"
"Well, it wasn't only bad luck. Take a look at her throat."
I looked and saw deep purple marks in the translucent flesh. "Strangled?"
"Indeed. It looks as though someone choked her and threw her away."
"She wasn't an especially pretty girl, was she? For a bride, I mean."
"Every bride is special, Constable. This one is no exception..."

"...I know it's difficult, but these things happen every day."
"But it isn't every day this time. It was her wedding day. When she was killed, I mean. Someone killed her on her wedding day."
"It would seem so."
"She put sixpence in her shoe and she picked out a white dress and she was getting married. And then someone choked the life out of her, and if the last thing she saw was her new husband, there was no love for her in his eyes. She was discarded like rubbish, tossed in the water and left there."
"It is a shame."
"It's more than a shame, Mr. Pringle. Its a crime. And don't you have something to do with solving crimes?"

Unable to reach out to any of the Detectives on the Murder Squad, Pringle sets out himself to identify the Blue Girl. From there to find out who and why she was brought to such an end. That it was a murder Dr. Kingsley has not doubt. But by whom and why? Who would kill a young girl on her wedding day?

Review -

I thoroughly enjoyed this small mystery. It reminded me of the quick snippets of murder that filled the old Ellery Queen magazines of the seventies and eighties. What is also so good here is that you get a glimpse of the world that Alex Grecian has created with his first novel The Yard and the follow up, The Black Country.
In The Blue Girl, Grecian does not use one of his main characters from the novels, instead makes the central figure one of the bit players; Constable Pringle. This is refreshing as he breathes more life into Pringle than you ever glimpse in the novels and Pringles attitude and approach to solving the murder is so different from what the detectives would have done.
Dr. Kingsley and Fiona are central here as they are in the novels but it is Pringle who carries the story. At first approaching the death of the young bride as a nuisance and then as a challenge. More out of dislike for those involved then any desire to bring the killer to justice.
In the end, the crime and its aftermath opens Pringles eyes up to himself and his abilities as a policeman. Something we are not sure is a good thing.
A very good read. ( )