A likable duo is at the center of Broadchurch-creator Chibnall’s debut: detectives Nicola Bridge and her newbie partner, Harry Ward, dubbed Westlife for his boy-band looks and first name. Small-town Fleetcombe, on England’s Dorset coast, is the setting; it’s Nicola’s hometown, and she’s back to separate her husband from an affair, a plot line that creates a realistic undercurrent of desperation that matches the bizarre crime facing the new partners. The naked body of a man is found tied to a chair on a road near town. That’s odd enough in Fleetcombe, where sharp words at the local pubs—one of them the White Hart of the book’s title—are about as violent as it gets. But there’s more: the body has a stag’s antlers affixed to its head, a sinister touch that eager Harry tries to tie to mythology and local history, only to be brought back to earth by his more practical and seasoned colleague. Work the evidence, she says, setting the two on a winding path that creates a solid procedural enjoyably filled with oddball townspeople, personal travails, the inevitable local criminal element, and one very savvy little girl, a character whom readers will want to swoop in and save. This absorbing thriller shows all the hallmarks of having been written by a master of TV drama.
