|
|
|
Books reviewed here are generally not available in the United States. At the moment we have no source to recommend for direct ordering from the UK. JANUARY - FEBRUARY REVIEWS
GRIEF
ENCOUNTERS
As far as policing goes, though,
Charlie is far from past it. A fellow police officer resigns after scurrilous
allegations that he has downloaded child porn on his computer. A respected
politician kills himself after being photographed in embarrassing circumstances
with a lady. A dedicated headmistress is accused of drunk driving which could
bring her career to an end. At this point, Charlie decides the
headmistress has been set up, something he would be pleased to prove as he quite
fancies her, his most recent girlfriend, the unlikely Olympic athlete, has done
a runner (sic). He soon finds that a small group of people are playing a
dangerous game and sets about catching them.
The description of life inside a police station is totally
realistic, showing the human side of police work, and Pawson writes with a dry,
acerbic wit that brings the reader out in spontaneous peals of laughter, as
delightful as finding unsuspected sovereigns in the Christmas pudding. One empathises with the character of Charlie Priest as he
ruminates about his life and career to date with increasing nostalgia.
Yet the crime is as gritty as anything found in the sink estates of our
cities. I believe that only the enduring
success of “Heartbeat,” a TV series set in a similar fell country
background, can have kept this series off English TV screens. -
Ron Ellis NOVEMBER - DECEMBER REVIEWS CUT
HER DEAD
Incomprehensible
multi-media art projects by conceited post-graduates are almost a literary cliché.
Make them four sociopathic aesthetes whose art project involves the abduction
and mock execution of young women for posting on the Internet and you have the
basis for the plot of CUT HER DEAD, a
new novel from Iain McDowall. Brady,
Annabelle, Maria and Adrian are arty, sophisticated, high-living villains,
living for their art and paying for it with stolen credit card accounts. They
are so smart, so computer-savvy and so careful that no one, least of all the
cops, has a chance of breaking their security and holding them responsible for a
series of shocks to the senses of society that include witnessing a girl being
buried alive, a mock execution by hanging, and the staking out of a naked young
woman on the green of a local golf course, with “property of art” painted
across her body. So far,
all of the crimes have ended short of serious physical harm, but the cops fear
that they will escalate to murder. DCI Frank Jacobson and his crew pull out all
the stops to track them down, but these guys really are good and it looks very
possible that evil will triumph. Computer technology, crime scene forensics, and
old-fashioned police persistence all play a part in the cops’ increasingly
desperate efforts to apprehend, arrest and convict the Art Gang, as the press
has labeled them. McDowall
has given us a gem of a police procedural with enough twists and surprises in
the plot to hold the interest of the most jaded fan. His characters, especially
the young villains, are fascinating and repellant at the same time. Even the
cops are flawed. Jacobson, with his affair with the hotel manager and stolen
cigarettes in the police station, and his sergeant, whose failed affair leads
him to the brink of criminal stalking, are the best it gets and the reader
wonders whether they will be good enough. This one
is a keeper — shocking, demanding careful attention from the reader and
ultimately satisfying. RECOMMENDED. CUT
HER DEAD Four bright young things go on a crime spree in the English Midlands. They abduct and terrorize attractive young women, subjecting them to near-death experiences while videotaping their futile resistance and ultimate capitulation. Led by Brady, an amoral, sadistic egotist, the group includes two young women in his thrall, and a retiring computer geek who handles all of the technical details of the self-proclaimed “Art Terrorists,” including sending the edited films to the media. Detective Chief Inspector Frank Jacobson and his colleague Detective Sergeant Ian Kerr, of the Crowby constabulary, are stymied. Even though the police know they are looking for two men and two women, the abductors have covered their tracks brilliantly and watching the villains pat themselves on the back for the very actions that the police are baffled by is grimly entertaining even while it’s frustrating. Several interwoven story lines are run concurrently, and bits and pieces of the lead cops’ personal lives are doled out sparingly to the reader. Where Jacobson has actually begun to develop a romantic relationship, Kerr is still bemoaning the loss of Rachel, his “bit on the side,” and can’t figure out how to deal with his marriage. As the story line careened toward the climax, I was utterly absorbed and completely satisfied by the explosive finale. However, I felt uncomfortable because a substantial portion of the story was told from the perspective of the bad guys and I found it impossible to relate to their callous amorality and motivation. Spending this much time in the minds of people for whom one has NO positive regard or even minimal empathy is amazingly difficult. - Carol Howell |
