Relaxing, with a glass of wine

mathmaniac

This detective, Mike Shepherd, dresses without the rumpled look of a Colombo. His inquisitive brain is not constantly mulling over impressions that will lead to discovery of the motive and method of a criminal. He works with two other people always - a young woman, Detective Sims, and a young man, Detective Breen. This combination of partners works very well. 'Collaborative' applies to their style.

It's not that they are brilliant. It's not that they are so energetic that they would put any ordinary crew to shame. It's that they go to work - and just work. They do the job, slogging along through trivia sometimes, always following the same playbook, getting along on the job and leaving the job at night to return to their ordinary lives. Those lives we can only guess about: we don't see much, if anything, of the interiors where they live. They don't hang together like city cops in big cities, and they don't clash. There is no stressful tension between Sims and Shepherd. Breen is married, and this is almost a footnote. His wife Roxy likes to play Xbox, this we know. We don't really need to know anything more.

Detective Shepherd has been married a few times. He may encounter attractive women on the job, appreciate their looks, and notice when they flirt with him, but it doesn't spark interest because that private life he leads outside of work is just that - private. Sims is not sizing him up with interest; it takes a while for her to warm up to an attractive young man in town who courts her for awhile with chess dates (when he says, 'Care to come inside for a quickie?' she knows he means a chess game in the middle of the day - no coy looks, no winks, just trust that they can take their time to get to know each other).

I enjoy this mystery series so much because the people who work together like each other and their work. They don't rely on each other for anything other than work, because the days spent at work together are so busy and challenging. Mike Shepherd likes his old car and his country music. No one else has to like those things, but it's not important! They hardly define him. The detectives have guns but they don't wear them or pull them out like power accessories. Brokenwood is a small town. Characters who are 'larger than life' would be out of place. Prepare to relax and feel the slow pace of that life. There's still plenty of money, plenty of style, and plenty of crime!

Gina, the Russian medical examiner, is one of my favorite characters. She, too, likes her work. She is friendly and not seductive but instead, likeable and entertaining. Her constant references to Russia and the Russian 'take' on life, values, and style, are really funny.

score 10/10

mathmaniac 7 June 2020

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5807371/