This is the story of DS Glyn Capaldi
He is a Welsh policeman he has been transferred to the countryside.
He investigates the case of a missing Eastern European girl even though his colleagues and the locals say there is nothing wrong.
Capaldi upsets a lot of people he wont rest.
He eventuallysolves the case.
OK book nothing special. ( )

Super Geschichte, toller Hauptcharakter und klasse Schreibstil. ( )

This guy needs a vacation.
This is the first in a series featuring DS Glyn Capaldi. Once a rising star in the big city, he has been banished to the small town of Dinas in rural Wales after screwing up a major case.
He wasn't exactly met by Welcome Wagon. Never mind the suspicious, close knit community. Even the other cops want nothing to do with him.
He tags along to the scene of a stolen van. It was taken by 6 men after they picked up a female hitchhiker & left in a remote area. Hours later, 5 of them come staggering out of the bush armed with an implausible story. Missing: one of the men & the hitchhiker.
Capaldi smells something rotten but is told to drop it by his colleagues. After all, they know these men & they're all "good people". He could care less about the locals, it's the woman he's worried about & proceeds to do some digging. No one is prepared for what he'll find.
This is a complex plot with many side stories. Just when you think Capaldi has it sussed, there is another layer of lies & deceit that changes the direction of the investigation. And don't think murder will be the worst of it. Contrary to what we're told, these are NOT good people & the revelations of their crimes may be disturbing to some readers. 
For me, this is a case of liking the character more than the story. Capaldi is a flawed yet decent guy & smart cop who made one dumb decision. His thoughts & dialogue reveal a sardonic, slightly cynical sense of humour that helps him deal with his exile. There is also a deep regret for the mistakes he's made. Part of him accepts his posting as punishment, part of him will do anything to get the hell out of there. 
I know the exiled cop as outcast is a popular trope of this genre. It usually follows that he's the only one who figures out what is going on & must do so with little support. But it's taken to extremes here. I get that a community may circle the wagons to protect their own against an outsider but when the true nature of the crimes comes to light, it's hard to believe anyone would cover for the sadistic perpetrators. Also, Capaldi has to continually fight his colleagues as well & after awhile it became tiring.
Many of the cast are not good people but they are good characters & along with tight dialogue, it's what makes this as compelling as it is. Just a few breaks in the constant sturm und drang would improve the pace & reading experience. I'd like to bump into Capaldi again but maybe I'll skip to book #3 to see if his situation is any better. ( )

Good People by Ewart Hutton is the first of a mystery series set in Wales. The main character, D.S. Glyn Capaldi, has been sent from the city of Cardiff to the rural district of central Wales as a punishment for breaking the rules, something he is all too fond of doing. This is an area populated by “good people”, people with strong, moral attitudes and an area where major crime simply doesn’t exist.

But one night six men and a young woman disappear, and when they are found the next day only five have returned. These five are well known young men of the community and they have a good explanation about what happened. The local police accept the story and are ready to close the book on the affair, but Capaldi remains unconvinced. On his own, he digs deeper and starts to uncover a web of lies and deceit that lead him to a depth of moral corruption that is horrifying.

This story is complex and twisting. Just when you think you have figured out where it’s going, it takes another turn. Capaldi is a very engaging character, but I was left scratching my head at how quickly he was able to put the pieces together, if he is that smart, then how did he let himself fall from grace and get posted to this remote area in the first place. That said, I still was quite impressed with this first book and plan to continue on with the series. A word of warning about the degree of sexual depravity that this book contains, the storyline becomes quite gruesome in places but overall, I found Good People to be a dark and engrossing thriller. ( )

Detective Sergeant Glyn Capaldi has been posted to “the big bit in the middle [of Wales] that God gave to the sheep” after disgracing himself during a case in Cardiff. It is meant to be a place where nothing happens, a place from which he might one day be able to redeem himself if he stays quietly out of trouble. The locals don’t think there’s much to be bothered with when a hired minibus is hijacked one Saturday night by a group of rugby supporters returning from Wales-England match. Even when the group is found hiking in the woods the next day with one of their number missing, along with a female hitchhiker they supposedly picked up, the locals are un-fazed. And when the group reveals the woman was actually a prostitute they hired for the single men of their group (and who has now returned to the city) everyone but Capaldi thinks that’s the end of the business. The men have ‘come clean’ with their embarrassment and should be left alone. Capaldi though thinks there is something screwy about the story and the over-the-top reaction of the locals to his initially gentle probing is enough to keep him interested in uncovering what really happened that night.

It’s rare for me that a book’s title is enough to make it worth reading but as soon as I saw GOOD PEOPLE I knew I wanted to read the book. You hear and see that phrase used so often in modern parlance, often as a kind of defensiveness against some real or imagined deficiency in the group of people being so described. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of good people inhabited this book and how they might be the very opposite of good if you scratched the surface. And, in yet more rarity, I found exactly what I expected in that the good people of mid-Wales, well some of them at least, were very bad indeed. Hutton’s done a terrific job of depicting a fairly isolated, insular community in which everyone is connected by family, business or both and they don’t take kindly to interfering strangers who dare to question the behaviour of the community’s leaders. They’re good people, right? At times this very atmospheric book, a fair bit of which takes place in back woods as depicted on the cover, felt like slightly updated Deliverance country. Deliciously creepy.

As the story’s first-person narrator Capaldi’s presence is strong but his black humour, dark-ish past and dissatisfaction with rural living provide enough substance to make spending so much time seeing the world through his eyes worthwhile. And although he does sport an ex-wife he’s not an alcoholic and doesn’t have any children feeling neglected by his dedication to his job so he’s not brimming with the genre’s stereotypes. He is surrounded by an interesting mix of supporting characters too, including some very bad bad guys. I particularly liked the depiction of the relationships between people; there were lots of layers here that gave the book something extra.

I have to say I wasn’t as thrilled with the plot, particularly towards the end when it turned into something of a farce and entirely unbelievable given what had gone before. I wish I could discuss what bothered me in more detail but that would require the giving of spoilers which I am loathe to do. The first three quarters of the novel was better though and even with the few odd, patchy bits that one might allow of a début, it definitely held my attention. Without dragging the story out Hutton did a good job of showing how difficult and slow it would be to uncover dark secrets in such a place as people are reticent to come forward with the little pieces of the puzzle they each have.

There was enough to like about GOOD PEOPLE to ensure I will actively seek out the next in what I presume is a planned series. The setting and characters were of above average quality and if the plot wasn’t quite up to that standard there was lots of promise. Definitely worth a read.