Preamble
As I read and write and think a lot about detective and crime fiction, I’ve a series of reviews on the theme. Sadly, capacity is too limited to cover detective films and TV series too! If you’re interested in reading my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available), check it out here.
Or you can take a look at my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies: support on Kickstarter or preorder now!
See also
These lists capture other detective/crime stories and characters that I thought of as I was reading this piece. I won’t explain why, to avoid spoilers, but they’re associations and not ‘if you liked this, then you’ll love…’ recommendations!
- Other Will Carver mysteries (Psychopaths Anonymous and Good Samaritans)
- Death and the Seaside by Allison Moore
- A Study in Pink, the pilot of the BBC’s Sherlock series
- The Mentalist pilot
Review (4 out of 5)
While Good Samaritans avoids the bulk of the detective’s work for the purposes of following murder Seth and his wife, Maeve, Nothing Important Happened Today has a greater focus on the detective himself, with Maeve weaving in and out of the story in the way that, in Psychopaths Anonymous later on in the series, Pace does for her. I quite enjoy the somewhat discombobulating continuity between Will Carver’s novels, which keeps us at arm’s length from Detective Pace (although it probably doesn’t help that I read some of the Pace novels out of order!). Stylistically, however, it may not be for everyone.
This second entry in the Detective Pace universe follows Pace through what might be characterised as his own personal emotional turmoil, while the novel’s central ‘crimes’ are a series of apparently connected suicides by cult members, The People of Choice. Some of the book’s descriptions of the victims preparing to commit suicide are quite disturbing, in part because of their accurately drawn depictions of how suicidal ideation can live alongside ‘normal’ life. Despite Pace feeling like something of a blank to me, his other characters are carefully drawn and compelling.
The novel also plays heavily on the inherent suspicion that often attaches itself to psychologists and psychiatrists, the ‘head doctors’ whose ability to influence us, especially at our times of greatest weakness, may be hard to both recognise and stomach. How best to help people who are suffering, including how to protect them from exploitation, is a very relatable conundrum.
The novel is not really drawn in such a way as you can solve the crime alongside the detective, or at least that wasn’t my experience of it (but I haven’t done a re-read to try!). It nevertheless drags you along on his breakneck journey toward solving the case, or his own destruction. I really enjoyed this novel, just sadly not quite as much as either Samaritans or Psychopaths!
Will Carver’s Nothing Important Happened Today was Book 60 of my 2022 reading adventure. You can see the whole thread for 2022, and look back to 2021, on Twitter.
Dominique Gracia 
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