Liminal Lakes by Luke Oswald

Thanks to the Trainline.com 

Title: Liminal Lakes

Author: Luke Oswald 

Publisher: not known 

Source: TV series New Tricks S9 E7 Dead Poets

If you have never seen the BBC programme New Tricks, you may not know that it’s a cold case police procedural. There is one senior police officer, a woman, leading the cold case investigations, and three older, retired police officers (all men) who are employed for their expertise. Because they are no longer police officers our heroes tend to cut corners, and don’t do things quite by the book. Or indeed anything like the book.

Anyway, in the episode Dead Poets, the team is looking into the mysterious disappearance, or possible murder, of a young poet called Sean Docherty. 

The case is complicated by a recent book of poems, Liminal Lakes, allegedly by a different poet called Luke Oswald. The poetry seems to have been copied from Sean Docherty’s work, or is at least definitely in Sean’s style, but could be by him. But if Sean is dead, or vanished, and nobody knows where he is, then when did the copying occur? Or how come Luke had access to Sean’s unpublished poems? Is Luke simply guilty of stealing Sean’s poetry? And when? Or is there something more sinister behind this little book of poetry? 

Questions, questions.

Well, obviously it turns out that Luke Oswald didn’t steal the poems, and Sean Docherty hasn’t been murdered. And although I struggle to read poetry (a severe overdose of Wordsworth as a teenager), I think that Liminal Lakes sounds like rather a good title for a collection of poems. I can just see the book in a matte grey paper cover, sitting on a table in Waterstones.

The name New Tricks comes from the belief that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Thanks to the Trainline.com