Greedy Grifters and Lunatic Lies

5 Star Review

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Editorial Book Review:

By T Howard

J T Owens has a gift for finding the most atmospheric corners of mid-century England and dropping a murder into them with the quiet confidence of someone who knows exactly what he is doing. Greedy Grifters and Lunatic Lies takes Detective Inspector Temple and his sergeant Cantwell to Woodsmere, a medieval manor house converted into a private clinic on the edge of Dartmoor, and the setting does everything a good crime novel setting is supposed to do: it breathes, it threatens, and it keeps its secrets in the exact same way the people inside it do.

The case begins with a missing person. The flame-haired matron of the clinic has not been seen for days, and what appears to be a straightforward investigation opens steadily onto something considerably darker. Owens has a talent for this kind of escalation, the kind that feels inevitable in retrospect rather than manufactured for dramatic effect. By the time Temple and Cantwell are being taken to places they would rather not go, you are already too invested to look away.

What makes the DI Temple series genuinely satisfying is the partnership at its center. Temple and Cantwell are described as a seemingly ill-assorted team, which is classic crime fiction architecture and works here because Owens gives both characters enough interior life to make their dynamic feel earned rather than formulaic. The 1950s South Devon setting, which the first book established so vividly through the grimy world of fixed dog races and corrupt bookies, shifts here into the more rarefied and equally sinister atmosphere of private medicine and the secrets wealthy patients pay to keep.

One reviewer described the series as where Morse meets Wycliffe, which captures both the literary quality of the writing and the regional specificity that gives the books their particular texture. Owens writes with the precision of someone who knows his landscape intimately and respects his reader enough not to over-explain it.

For fans of classic British crime fiction with real period atmosphere and a detective partnership worth following for many cases to come, this series is the genuine article.

About the Author

J T Owens

J T Owens is the pen name of an award-winning author who spent many years writing academic titles for Edward Arnold and Hodder & Stoughton, as well as plays for BBC radio and the stage.

In 2024, Owens published The Fisherman Returns, a thriller inspired by detailed research conducted in Portugal and London surrounding the years of the Carnation Revolution. Originally shelved after the author received an anonymous warning to stop researching, the manuscript was rediscovered years later and extensively edited before publication. In 2025, the novel received three thriller awards, including a Bronze in the Global Thrillers.

Owens is also the author of the DI Temple Investigation crime series, set in South Devon during the 1950s. The series follows Detective Inspector Temple and Detective Sergeant Cantwell through cases involving murder, corruption, extortion, and deception. The second novel, Greedy Grifters and Lunatic Lies, won a Bronze Award in the Detective-Crime category of the Global Book Awards 2026.