Dining with Humboldt Squid (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781777454760)

The village of Nether Vortex nestles in the outer spiral of the Great Pacific Gyre where colonizing octopods have built a civilization out of a giant swirl of plastic waste. With its nosy neighbours and dark secrets, Nether Vortex provides author Devilly Peen with much material for her crime novellas. These she turns out at great speed, typing with multiple tentacles.

Devilly is an amateur sleuth in the classic tradition who--to the frustration of the police--has an uncanny ability to appear at crime scenes. What was planned as a weekend birdwatching expedition by the Nether Vortex Ramblers turns sinister as a body is found adrift in the flotsam. Devilly must use her octopus skill at camouflage, her expertise in marine poisons, and her familiarity with the pelagic underworld to unmask the villains.

In this third volume of The Gyre trilogy, ferocious squid trap Devilly and other guests in a remote seaside Inn. Meet a wealthy blue-ring octopus and his sinister sidekick, a professor of cuttlefish court dancing and a scalpel-wielding pathologist on a busman's holiday. Tensions rise as the body count increases and corpses pile up on the counter of the lounge bar.

A not too cozy mystery, unconventional and taking a unique stand on plastic pollution. There may be recourse to explosions of ink.