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Most people who have access to British television or PBS in America are familiar with the outlines of the modern British detective procedural. The honest lead copper and his long-suffering detective-constable partner doggedly pursue a murder case that involves half a dozen likely, wildly diverse suspects. Our Heroes pick up the slim tendrils of evidence as they go along, slowly rule out some of the suspects, arrest the wrong person about halfway through, then finally annoy the perpetrator into making a full confession in the last ten minutes. It's like Noh theater with pints of ale and black taxis.

Black Out is none of these things. Unfortunately, it suffers from this lack.

Detective Sargent Frederick Troy of the London Murder Squad could be the protagonist in a Scandinoir murder mystery: the scion of an aristocratic family, he's a cross between an unmade bed and the world's unluckiest human, but (naturally) supposedly a detecting prodigy. He also (of course) has no regard for rules, procedure, policy, or his superiors, which, judging from this story, doesn't help him much in the prosecution of his cases. He happens across a severed human arm in the Blitz-ravaged London of 1944 -- not exactly unusual under the circumstances, but this one has been surgically removed rather than blasted off by a bomb. This discovery leads him to multiple killings, skulduggery among the pre-D-Day American military high command, a sociopathic killer, and inter-agency rivalries within the UK and US security apparatus.

The author's depiction of a ruined, haunted London is the star of this particular show. The blackouts, food shortages, black-market wheeling-dealing, and general disintegration of orderly society both feels right and makes its own kind of sense. The dialog also seems fitting for the characters and the times, including period references that actually appear to be correct for the milieu.

Unfortunately, the case itself has so many loose threads and so many dead ends that even after four hundred pages, it's hard to describe, far less understand what exactly is going on. Troy doesn't make it easy on us. He makes leaps of intuition (many of which end up being wrong but are pursued extensively anyway) that are often unsupported by any evidence we the readers have been allowed to see. The final resolution is both out of left field and hard to tie back to everything that has happened up to the final chapters.

In addition to causing his boss more tsouris than any real-life superintendent would put up with given the small return in evident progress, Troy's personal dramas fill up so much time that it's amazing that he manages to get any policing done at all. In the course of this story, Troy gets shot, stabbed, beaten to a pulp (multiple times), bombed (twice, and I don't mean "drunk"), and spends uncounted weeks in the hospital. He has wild monkey sex with not one but two beautiful, oversexed women, both of whom have personal agendas so obvious that it's a wonder our ace detective didn't spot them until it was too late. (Unfortunately, the sex scenes did nothing to change my general opinion of sex scenes in books: they stop the plot cold and abound with bad prose.) All this strains both credulity and patience -- the story seemed endless even though it was frantic with incident.

The supporting characters are a mixed bag. Troy's long-suffering but far more sensible partner, DC Wildeve, spends much of his time being bewildered by his guv's behavior, confused by the wildly messy case, or covering up for Troy's misbehavior, making him a perfect touchstone for the reader. I'd rather have spent the bulk of the story with Wildeve than Troy. Troy's put-upon DI boss has the patience of several saints, though we don't know why. Troy's two female playmates never seem to become real people; one has a manner and an arc that's so outlandish, it barely misses becoming comic relief.

Black Out is an example of masterful scene-setting undone by plate-of-spaghetti plotting and uneven characterization. If you like this one, there are six others in the series; if you don't, you can safely stop right here. I have the second book in the series and will probably read it someday. Until then, I'll keep the author's skill with atmosphere in mind while I forget the mess that surrounded it.