I loved the first two Charlie Priest police procedurals by Stuart Pawson so much that it came as a shock to realize how long it had been since I'd read them. I quickly picked up this third book in the series to rectify the matter. The Judas Sheep brought me right back into the story of one of my favorite coppers.

Stuart Pawson knows how to create multi-layered mysteries with excellent pacing, and his writing style draws me right into the story, but-- as is the case with any character-driven reader-- it's Charlie Priest himself who's the shining beacon in this series. He's a good investigator with an excellent team around him, and they are all familiar with his little quirks. (Like to be called by your title? You can count on Charlie to make a point of calling you by name. Several times.) His irreverent sense of humor is a thing of beauty, and I adore Charlie's similes.

In The Judas Sheep, it's good to see Charlie taking his health scare seriously. Of course, it helps that there's a new woman in his life, so learning that there are actually perks to not living for his job comes as a pleasant surprise to him. But if there's one sure thing about Charlie, it's that he's passionate about justice, and he wants justice not only for the dead but for the living, too. Most police in search of results would not treat a dead woman's sister the way Charlie does, and I love the character all the more for it.

If you enjoy police procedurals with engrossing mysteries, a sense of humor, and a wonderful main character, you can't go wrong with Stuart Pawson's Charlie Priest series. If you want to give the series a try-- and I hope you will-- start at the beginning with The Picasso Scam. You're in for some fun. ( )

The Judas Sheep by Stuart Pawson is the third book in his Charlie Priest series. I find this a thoroughly enjoyable “procedural” series. DI Priest enjoys his work and his home life is relatively peaceful and happy. Although Charlie is still on sick leave after the events of the last book, he can’t help but be interested in his team’s current case which appears to be a murder, but the corpse has not been found. This corpse eventually does show up in a very macabre way. Meanwhile Charlie has been drawn into another case involving smuggling and drugs. When a connection is made with these two cases, Charlie finds himself investigating some very dangerous people.

While this book didn’t quite reach the heights of the first two books, it is nevertheless a fast-paced, interesting story involving policework in Yorkshire, England. The author uses a certain amount of humor to keep his story from turning too dark. Although the plot relied a little too much on coincidence, The Judas Sheep was another good entry in this series. ( )

Very entertaining. Pawson has a very deft touch and manages to balance a well- developed and perfectly plausible plot with some woeful wise-cracking from his principal character, the immensely likeable and utterly believable Detective Inspector Charlie Priest.
This is the fourth novel of Pawson's that I have read so far and I am looking forward to the rest of the series. ( )

This is the first book in the DI Charlie Priest series. It's an English Police Procedural, but quite a bit different than most of the books that I read in this genre. For one thing it is wickedly funny. I love the humour in the book, and I really like Charlie. I cannot wait to read more about him. In this book he is off on temporary disability, but he can't stay away from police work, so agrees to a surveillance job that turns out to be anything but simple. It appears on the surface to be a simple drugs running operation that takes Charlie over to Rotterdam on the ferry, but the group he's observing has its fingers in a lot more pies than that, and they are extremely dangerous. This book has a reality feel to it. Pawson gets British police work just right!! ( )