Death Toll, by Jim Kelly

Jim Kelly writes a fine mystery.  I loved the Phillip Dryen series, and the Shaw and Valentine series seems equally good.  DCI Peter Shaw is school smart, caring, and dogged; DC George Valentine is street smart, cunning, and wounded from the damage done to his career by mishandled evidence in an old cold case.  My problem with the book is in the vast number of characters willing to kill, maim, torture, poison, lie, and assault other people to discover or bury the truth.  There seems to be quite a number of soulless inhabitants of South Lynn.  But how about this for a description?  "Down the channel which led to the open sea an automatic foghorn called to a beat as slow as a dying heart."