The Sweet Smell of Rain

Present day Tyneside and Northumberland provide the setting for ‘The Sweet Smell of Rain’ the first novel by former Detective Ian Douthwaite.

We follow the daily vexations of Detective Sergeant Jim Hodder, a man battle weary, downtrodden and careworn by the seemingly endless cycle of altercations with criminals, colleagues and ‘the system’

A man nearing the end of his service, he is not so much resistant to change, just tired by it. Hodder has seen the wheel invented so many times, that the pedestrian pace of life that he was planning for his retirement seems positively appealing.

Consequently, due to a combination of his desire to ‘do the correct thing’ and his numerous shortcomings, he excels at digging deeper, darker holes from which he has to constantly extricate himself.

Indeed, this happens on such a regular basis that his judgement is frequently drawn into question.

We first meet Hodder when he is interviewing Dean Parks, a low level ‘thorn in the side’ who is in custody for a serious sexual assault. Hodder erroneously thinks that the case is straight forward, a mere ‘walk in the park’ and that it will be wrapped up in no time.

However, Dean Parks would prove himself to be manipulative, cunning and just a little bit on the evil side. All in all, quite a formidable opponent.

Furthermore, Hodder did not factor in the influence of Parks’ solicitor, the tweed clad, whisky swilling Francis Randall-Ord, a man clearly with many ‘connections’.

Needless to say, as with ‘all things Hodder’ things rarely go smoothly, and before long he finds himself entwined in an investigation that may not only have serious consequences for himself, but also for those closest to him.

Throw into the mix, the internal politics of a busy C.I.D. office, a boss who is constantly on his back and two opposing ‘Crime Lords’ both of whom want Parks for their own reasons.

In what starts out like just another day in the life of Jim Hodder, he encounters a whole raft of memorable situations, characters, backstabbing and double dealing.

To add to Hodder’s woes, he has a crumbling marriage, an ‘uneasy’ relationship with his step-daughter and to make matters worse, his closest work colleague (D.C. Jeff Baxter) believes that Hodder is going into meltdown which subsequently strains Baxter’s loyalty to the extreme.

For quite valid reasons, Hodder later finds himself side-lined from a major investigation, and ‘burdened’ with the much less appealing task of looking into a lethal batch of counterfeit alcohol.

Hodder suspects, indeed knows, that the two investigations are linked and unbeknown to his senior colleagues, he continues to work in the shadows seeking to influence the outcome of the ‘other enquiry’, for personal reasons.

‘The Sweet Smell of Rain’ is written with a darkly dramatic and understated sense of humour. The Tyneside of Hodder is populated with numerous extraordinary characters, as the story carries us to some of the regions well known and not so well known landmarks, and all of this set against the sub-tropical climate for which the region is so famed!

Hodder is rarely far away from a situation which will leave the reader asking ‘Is there no situation that a Police Officer can’t make any worse’?

In actual fact, Hodder finds himself asking himself the same question on an equally frequent basis as each problem he encounters seems to surpass the previous one.

This is a Tyneside that will not appear in any tourist guidebook!