This is the 5th book in the Philip Dryden series. Philip is a big city newspaper journalist who has since moved to a very small town when his wife has a bad car accident and is comatosed for many years. The books do that balance of the personal and the "mystery" really well and it doesn't hurt that Philip is a very engaging character.
"The Capri shook to the sound of snoring, and through the fly-spattered windscreen of the mini-cab Philip Dryden contemplated the Fen horizon. Humph, the driver, slept peacefully, his lips brought together in a small bow, his sixteen stone compressing the seat beneath him. Around them the drained wasteland that had once been Whittlesea Mere, an inland lake the size of a small English county, stretched beyond sight. Overhead a cloud the size of a battleship sailed across an unblemished sky."