fullybooked2017

THE DARK WIVES . . . Between the covers

Readers who have also watched the successful TV series dramatising the Vera Stanhope novels will have their own views on how Brenda Blethyn’s Detective Inspector matches up to the woman on the printed page. I stopped watching TV versions of police procedurals years ago, with the demise of John Thaw, so my take is purely based on the book. Vera Stanhope is a dowdy, frumpish woman in her 50s, lonely and probably a social misfit. Brought up by an eccentric father, Hector, in a moorland cottage in Northumbria, denied (by premature death) a mother’s love, she is a formidably intelligent detective. She drives a battered Land Rover, has holes in her socks, and doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

Here, she is handed a complex case that has splintered into myriad issues. At its heart is the apparently motiveless murder, by hammer attack, of an undergraduate and part time social worker, Josh Woodburn. A teenage girl, Chloe Spence, who was a reluctant resident at Rosebank, where Josh worked shifts, has gone missing. Where is she, and why was film and media enthusiast Josh, unbeknown to his family, moonlighting with shifts at a children’s home?

Vera has the death of one of her team, a Detective Constable called Holly, on her conscience, but she takes a maternal interest in Holly’s replacement, Rosie Bell, a rather glamorous and fashion conscious young woman who is actually a very good copper. When another inmate of Rosebank, a young chancer called Bradley Russell is found dead in a remote hillside bothy, the case becomes more complex.Without, I hope, giving too much away, Vera’s hunch is that Josh Woodburn’s death is connected with what he was really doing at Rosebank. Josh was a decent, caring young man, and very good with the children, but that wasn’t the main reason he was there. When Vera, with the help of fellow officer Charlie, joins the dots, the picture also explains why Brad also had to die.

Both the season and the mood of the book are distinctly autumnal. Vera’s work is her life, and there seems to be little outside the job. The depressing world of broken homes, absent fathers, and a society where children’s homes are run by shadowy corporations on a distinctly for profit basis does not improve Vera’s downbeat view of the world but, to borrow a line from Matthew Arnold’s Thyrsis, “The light we sought is shining still.”, and in Vera’s case the faint glimmer is provided by bringing justice to the dead. She couldn’t be more different from Derek Raymond’s nameless detective in the Factory Novels (click for more information) but they have the same fierce resolve.

If years of reading police-procedural crime novels has taught me anything, it is that well-balanced, happily married Detectives are not fun. Vera Stanhope is forever on the edge of things, caught up in her own personal history and sense of regret, reluctantly wearing a halo of missed opportunities and ‘what ifs’.. Her fierce empathy with those society has cast aside, combined with her innate shrewdness and ability to pick out a ‘wrong-un’ make her one of the genre’s most treasured creations.

The Dark Wives of the title are three stone monoliths on the fellside near Vera’s home. Legend has it that they were three strong willed women who were turned to stone by husbands fed up with their feistiness. In the preface, Anne Cleeves writes:
“The book is dedicated to teens everywhere, and especially to The Dark Wives – uppity young women with minds of their own, struggling to find a place in a difficult world.”
The novel is published by Macmillan and was published on 29th August.

September 1, 2024 1

THE LAZAR HOUSE . . . Between the covers

Diane Calton Smith’s medieval mysteries, set in Wisbech, don’t follow a continuous time line. The most recent, Back To The Flood, is set in 1249, while The Lazar House, published in 2022, is set in 1339. The geography of the town is much the same as in The Charter of Oswyth and Leoflede, where the author takes us back to 1190. In this book, most of the town still sits between two very different rivers. To the west, The Wysbeck is a sluggish trickle, easily forded, while to the east, the Well Stream is broader and more prone to violence.

South of the town is the hamlet of Elm (now a prosperous village) and on its soil stands The Lazar House. It is a hospice for those suffering from leprosy. Basically under the governance of the Bishop of Ely it must, however, be self financing. There was a deeply held belief, in those times, in the concepts of Heaven, Hell, and their buffer zone of purgatory. People believed that if they had any spare cash or – more likely – produce, and they gave it to a charity such as The Lazar House, then prayers would be said that would minimise the time donors’ souls had to spend waiting in the celestial ‘waiting room’ of Purgatory.

A rather grand supporter of The Lazar House is Lady Frideswide de Banlon. Widow of a rich knight, she has bestowed on The Lazar House tuns of fine ale from her demesne’s brewery, and it is a vital part of their constant attempts to stay solvent. Remember that ale, of various strengths, was a standard drink for all, as there was little water safe enough to drink.

Sadly, there is a downside. Frideswide is scornful, aggressive and deeply unpleasant in her dealings with those she deems lesser mortals. There is no shortage of people she has belittled, offended or denigrated. Much of the story unfolds through the eyes of Agathe, daughter of a local Reeve. She has chosen to work as what we now call a nurse at The Lazar House. Despite her robes, she has not taken Holy Orders and, should she choose, is perfectly able to accept the offer of marriage, proposed by another lay member of the community, Godwin the Pardoner. Put bluntly, his job is rather like that of a modern politician working with lobbyists. In return for financial favours or donations in kind, he has licence to forgive minor sins and guarantee that prayers of redemption will be whispered on a monthly, weekly – or daily basis – depending on the size of the donation.

When Lady Frideswide is found dead beside the footpath between The Lazar House and the brewery, the Bishop’s Seneschal, Sir John Bosse is sent for and he begins his investigation. His first conclusion is that Frideswide was poisoned, by deadly hemlock being added to flask of ale, found empty and discarded on the nearby river bank. He has the method. Now he must discover means and motive. Bosse is a shrewd investigator, and he realises that Frideswide was not, by nature, a charitable woman, therefore was the valuable gift of ale a penance for a previous sin? Pondering what her crime may have been, he rules out acts of violence, as they would have been dealt with by the authorities. Robbery? Hardly, as the de Banlon family are wealthy. He has what we would call a ‘light-bulb moment’, although that metaphor is hardly appropriate for the 14th century. Frideswide, despite her unpleasant manner, was still extremely beautiful, so Bosse settles for the Seventh Commandment. But with whom did she commit adultery?

When Bosse finds out the identity of her partner ‘between the sheets’, he is surprised, to say the least, but the revelation does not immediately bring him any nearer to finding her killer. The solution to the mystery, in terms of the plot, is very elegant, and worthy of one of the great writers of The Golden Age. It comes as a shock to the community, however, and brings heartbreak to more than one person. Diane Calton Smith draws us into the world of The Lazar House to the extent that when they suffer, so do we. The last few pages are not full of Hardy-esque bitterness and raging against life’s unfairness. Rather, they point more towards the sunlit uplands and, perhaps, better times ahead.

This is as clever a whodunnit as you could wish to read, and an evocative recreation of fourteenth century England. The author brings both the landscape and its people into vivid life. Published by New Generation Publishing The Lazar House is available now.

August 26, 2024 0

THE LOST COAST … Between the covers

Sometimes, how co-writing works seems fairly obvious. Ambrose Parry is the husband and wife writing team of Chris Brookmyre and Dr Marisa Haetzman. Their books are set in early 19th century Edinburgh, and centre on a physician called Will Raven. I imagine Chris provides the crime fiction experience – plotting, dialogue and such, while Marisa provided the (sometimes gory) medical details. Much as I admire James Patterson for his early books (and his amazing work for charity) I imagine that these days, when you see a novel by JAMES PATTERSON (large print) WITH (slightly smaller print) RANDOM NAME, all he is doing is replicating the painting school in Renaissance Europe, where a painting might be identified today as “school of” Raphael, or Leonardo, but was actually produced by apprentices working to a set formula. Incidentally, I am told that there is a “school of” Damien Hurst, which involves budding young artists sitting in a studio making objects in the stylle of ‘the master’. I am a huge fan of Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware books, and if his son has some input with this, the latest book in the Clay Edison series, then fair play, as long as it is readable – and it certainly is.

Clay Edison is a former San Francisco coroner, and I reviewed previous books in the series, Lost Souls and The Burning (click the links to go the reviews). Now, Edison has given up working for the state, and is registered as a private investigator. This case starts when an old friend is unexpectedly named as executor in a deceased relative’s will. He asks Edison for help, because he has discovered that the old lady had been paying monthly amounts for years into what seems to have been a mortgage on a property in a remote coastal settlement called Swann’s Flat.

Initially doing much of the work online, Edison suspects that a massive scam has been set up. Yes, Swann’s Flat exists, but the houses and building plots are nothing like those shown in the glossy brochures which have sucked in many gullible people. The business structure is a complex web of false corporations hiding behind other companies that exist in name only.

Edison makes the long drive to see for himself. The place is wild, remote, and the last few miles into the settlement are a terrifying drive along a steep trail that rises and the plummets between vertiginous cliffs and gullies. When he finally makes it into the tiny town, he finds one or two larger houses behind forbidding security arrangements, but most of all he sees ‘streets’ that have name posts, but no houses, no utilities and a general sense of being abandon. There is, however, a hotel, where he checks in under an assumed name. Later, after meeting Beau Bergstrom and his father Emil, who seem to be the town bigshots, he convinces them that he is looking to buy a building plot.

By now, the writers have introduced what seems to be a separate plot involving a missing college-age boy called Nicholas Moore, whose poster was pinned up, with several others, outside a grocery store in the next town along. Edison is intrigued by this, and when he leaves Swann’s Flat, telling the Bergstroms that he is going to sort out all the arrangements for the land purchase they think he is going to make, he returns to The Bay Area, and makes contact with the boy’s mother,Tara. She is single, neurotic, and initially doesn’t trust Edison. She tells him she no money to pay for another investigation, but gives him the name of the last person she hired, a woman called Regina Klein.

There is yet another strand to the plot, and this involves an avant-garde novelist called Octavio Prado, with whom Nicholas had become obsessed. Prado, too, has disappeared, leaving only the one widely acclaimed published work, and another which was so over-the-top that his agent failed to find a publisher. It remains, in original handwritten form, and this becomes key to what is going on. The case has thrown up many seemingly unconnected questions, but Edison believes that the answers to them all lie in Swann’s Flat. He persuades Regina Klein to join him and, posing as man and wife they return. The Kellermans, père et fils, bring all the seemingly disconnected plot strands together with a final – and violent – flourish. This entertaining thriller is published by Century and is available now.

August 21, 2024 0

THE MAN THEY COULDN’T HANG . . . The murder of Sybil Hoy (part 2)

SO FAR: 10th August, 1954. Just after 11.00 am. In the drive leading up to the former mansion known as Arden Field just outside Grantham, the body of 24 year-old Sybil Hoy was found. She had been brutally murdered. Her body was taken away to the mortuary, and police began searching for the weapon. Just a few hundred yards away, across the Kings School playing fields, was the railway embankment that carried the London to Edinburgh main line. A railway lengthman (an employee responsible for walking a particular stretch of line checking for problems) had just climbed the embankments, and stood back as the London to Edinburgh service known as The Elizabethan Express thundered past.

What he saw as the train clattered into the distance was utterly shocking. A man sat upright on the track, and just a few yards away, on the sleepers were the man’s severed legs. The man was conscious, and able to talk. An ambulance was summoned, and he was carried down the bank and rushed to hospital. The man was John Docherty, Sybil Hoy’s former fiancée.

Docherty, minus his legs, received further corrective surgery to the amputations delivered by the LNER locomotive, but was charged with murder, by a police office sitting at his bedside. He was conducted into a succession of magistrate hearings and eventually sent to be tried at Lincoln Assizes. It was the briefest of hearings, and he was sentenced to death.

After her body had been probed and prodded by investigators, it was eventually returned to her mother and father. God, or whoever controls the heavens, was not best pleased, because a violent storm rained down on the many mourners at the Victorian Christ Church in Felling

In the long history of newspapers reporting on murders and executions, there can seldom have been a bigger gift to headline writers. The five words ‘Legless Man Sentenced To Hang’ appeared over and over again in newspapers, both regional and national. For the Home Secretary, Gwilym Lloyd-George, himself an MP for Newcastle, the impending execution posed unique practical problems. Docherty literally could not walk to the execution chamber. He would have to be taken there in his wheelchair, and Henry Pierrepoint (or whichever executioner was appointed to the job) would have to oversee the grotesque scene of a man placed on the trapdoor, presumably sitting on his backside, hands pinioned (as was customary) and thus unable to maintain his balance. Almost inevitably, given the bizarre circumstances, the execution was called off. What became of the reprieved killer of Sybil Hoy is unclear. For citizen researchers, access to prison records via genealogy sites ends in 1951, so it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Docherty, born in 1926, could have been released and reached old age.

Because Docherty pleaded guilty, his state of mind and mental health was never raised in court. These days, we have too many examples of mentally ill people being free in the community to murder and maim. The Nottingham triple killer, Valdo Calocane is just one example. In Docherty’s case, his mindset was so febrile that within the space of sixty minutes or so, he inflicted nineteen ferocious knife wounds on his former fiancée, and then ran a few hundred yards to the main railway line, climbed the embankment and put himself in the path of an express train. I use those two words advisedly. People who commit suicide by train usually put the matter beyond doubt by throwing themselves bodily in front of the oncoming train. Is it possible that Docherty calculated that by just putting his legs on the line he would avoid fatal injury? We have no way of knowing. If it was a gamble, it paid off, because he evaded a date with the hangman. I have to say that if his actions were calculated, then he was an extremely devious individual.

August 20, 2024 0

THE MAN THEY COULDN’T HANG . . . The murder of Sybil Hoy (part 1)

Arnold House (above), in Great Gonerby, was built in 1820 for a local solicitor and JP, and changed hands many times over the decades. After World War II it was bought by Aveling Barford, which was a prominent Grantham firm making heavy vehicles such as road rollers and dumper trucks. The company used the grounds for social and sporting activities, while the house itself, by then known as Arnoldfield, was divided into flats for AB employees. Two such were Mr and Mrs Elliot, originally from the North East, and in 1954, they invited a young woman who they had known ‘back home’ to come and stay with them for a short holiday. Sybil Hoy, from Felling, near Gateshead, was certainly in need of a break, as she had recently broken off her relationship with a man called John Docherty, and he had not taken the separation well.

Sybil (right) was born in the summer of 1930, and grew up with her family in their house in the relatively comfortable Gateshead suburb of Felling. The few contemporary pictures which were published in newspapers at the time of her death show an attractive and confident young woman. At some point after WW2, she was courted by John Docherty, a few years her senior, who worked as a despatch clerk with a local firm. He was not in the best of health, and had been diagnosed with what Victorians called consumption. We now know it as tuberculosis and, despite reported occurrences of the disease within immigrant communities, it has now been conquered by immunisation. Docherty and Sybil became engaged, but at some point in the spring of 1954, Sybil had second thoughts, broke off the engagement and returned to Docherty the ring, and various other gifts.

Sybil worked in the sports section of a Gateshead department store, but In early August 1954, she was invited to spend a few days with the Mrs Elliots, at the flat in Arnoldfield. The intention was for Sybil to spend a few days there, before her parents joined her, and then went on to extend their holiday on the Kent coast. On the morning of 10th August, Sybil offered to walk into Grantham, a couple of miles away, but in those days no great distance, with the Elliot’s son, Kevin. Just after 11.00am, Mrs Elliot heard her son screaming at the communal front door to the flats. As she tried to comfort him, she ran a few yards down the drive, which had once clattered with the wheels of carriages belonging to Grantham’s gentry. What she saw would hang her for the rest of her days.

Lying partly at the edge of the drive and partly under a tree was the body of Sybil Hoy. She was lifeless and covered in blood. The subsequent post mortem found that she had been stabbed nineteen times by something resembling an army bayonet, with four of the wounds penetrating her heart. Police and an ambulance were summoned, but there was nothing to be done for Sybil Hoy. Police immediately began a murder investigation, but a discovery on the nearby railway embankment a little later that day was to add an utterly bizarre note to what was already a gruesome killing.

IN PART TWO a grim discovery, a trial, and a problem for the Home Secretary

August 19, 2024 0

SERAPHIM . . . Between the covers

Seraphim – red-winged angels which, with , are among the first hierarchy of angels next to the throne of God. According to the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament, they had six wings, one pair for flying, another covering the face and the third pair covering the feet.

Ben Alder is a Jewish lawyer from Massachusetts, but currently working, with his partner Boris, in post Katrina New Orleans. The pair work for the Public Defender’s Office, meaning they pick up what we in the UK call Legal Aid work. It is badly paid and they deal with people who are at the very bottom end of society. The novel deals with Ben’s attempts to save a father and son from a lifetime in jail. The father, Robert McTell is accused of burglary by going equipped with tools to steal copper pipe from a school abandoned after the destruction of Storm Katrina. His son, Robert Johnson is in much more serious trouble. He has admitted shooting dead a much loved community figure, Lillie Scott, who has been a leading light in the attempts to rehabilitate and rebuild the city after the devastation of the storm. Another savage murder, where four youngsters, were gunned down while they were listening to music in a stationary car, works its way into the story

Reviewers of crime fiction like to put books in genre pigeon holes. If nothing else, it gives potential readers a heads-up about the content and style of a novel. After all, there are thousands of new CriFi books published every year and, for many readers, leisure time is a valuable commodity. I have to say that Seraphim refuses to be categorised. The closest I can get is to call it literary crime fiction. Despite the blurbs, it certainly isn’t a legal thriller. There are no tense courtroom exchanges between defenders and prosecutors. The world Ben Alder inhabits is a dystopia of broken lives, broken homes and broken promises, fogged in a miasma of disillusionment, cynicism and expediency.

One commodity that is notable for its absence in the criminal justice world of New Orleans is truth. Everyone, from the judge down, through legal counsel to the men shackled in cells – lies. Habitually and constantly. The prisoners don’t deal in truth, because experience tells them it will bring only pain. The lawyers’ version of truth is to put a story together that a jury might possibly believe, and this tale can be many miles away from what actually happened.

The timeline of the novel needs you to pay attention. Some sections are the here and now, while others are pre-Katrina. Other events take place far away from New Orleans in places like Memphis, where the homeless are temporarily re-homed. Neither Ben nor readers of this powerful novel ever do find out who shot Lillie Scott. There was certainly another boy, Willard, present on that fateful evening, but in spite of Ben’s elaborate narrative – designed to be told in court – that Willard was smaller and much more clever, and Robert was clinging to him as his only friend, the ‘truth’ never emerges. This, of course, is entirely in keeping with the premise of the novel, which is basically that there is no such thing as truth. Ben, shyly homosexual, even invents two mythical sons so that he can throw them into conversations to boost rapport with his clients.

The narrative is shot through with grim poetry, sonnets of death, rejection and betrayal. Despite not being a devoted Jew, Ben’s upbringing and education make the symbolism of the Hebrew bible very important to him, hence the title of the book. Seraphim is a provocative and potent work of literary fiction, where violence, revenge and cynicism are shared out equally between the battered streets of New Orleans and its courts of justice. Published by Melville House, it is available now.

August 11, 2024 0

BACK TO THE FLOOD . . . Between the covers

It is March 1249, and England is ruled by Henry Plantagenet (Henry III) son of the unfortunate KIng John, who featured in an early tale of medieval Wisbech by this author, In The Wash (click to read the review). For Wisbech people, the King and his court are far away and unknown. Their immediate overlord is Hugh of Northwold, Bishop of Ely, for who much of Wisbech is his manorial property, meaning that residents must pay him annual rent. In November 1236, however, a disastrous tide (what we would now call a North Sea Surge), devastated the flimsier properties of the town, and when, thirteen years later, the Bishop’s Seneschal*. Roger of Abynton arrives to make an audit of rents and repairs, he finds that many of the Bishop’s buildings have not been rebuilt and remain unoccupied, thus providing no income stream.

*Seneschal – an agent or steward in charge of a lord’s estate in feudal times.

When Alured, a local baker, is found dead in the reeds at the edge of The Wysbeck (then a sluggish stream, but now the tidal River Nene) most people assume that he drunkenly fell into the water after one two many ales in one of the inns he frequented. Sir Roger, after examining the body, is not so sure. Scratches on the torso suggest that the man was dragged to the river bank. Finding people with a motive to kill Alured is the easy part. He was a cheat, drunk, foul of mouth and temper and seemed to live his life with one aim only – to antagonise and goad everyone he meets.

Sir Roger is, by modern standards, a decent detective. He comes to realise that Alured was not murdered because he baked contaminated bread, or because he was an argumentative drunk who enjoyed starting fights in pubs. The book’s title is completely apposite. Everything that happens is a result of what happened – or didn’t happen – on that fateful night when the North Sea surge crashed through the banks and defences of Wisbech and changed lives for ever.

So deeply does Diane Calton Smith immerse us in 13th century England that we are not in the least surprised to learn that the New Year began on 25th March, or that there was an extensive calendar of Saints’ Days, very few of which would be celebrated by feasts, at least in the modern sense of the word. There is also a sense of how big the world was in those days. A journey from Wisbech to Leverington, two minutes in the car these days, took hours on treacherous and often impassable tracks. We are also reminded of the sanctity of Lent. Meat was seldom a regular item on the tables of most poor townspeople, but during the Holy observance, the daily ‘pottage’ would contain only root vegetables, perhaps made more palatable with ‘ransom’ – not a criminal demand for payment, but something akin to what we call Wild Garlic. Ale was ubiquitous, because there was little or no safe drinking water. It would have tasted very different to modern beer, as the use of hops in the brew would not come for another three hundred years.

Hand in hand with the astonishing historical detail we have a very clever whodunnit. Wisbech these days is not much of a place, but at least we have our history. I am acutely aware, thanks to this superb novel (and its predecessors) that every time I walk into town, there is a palimpsest beneath my feet, a resonant reminder that these very streets were walked on by our ancestors, and that we tread in their footsteps. This is superb historical fiction, full of insight and empathy but, most importantly, forging links of a chain that connects us with our roots. Back To The Flood is published by New Generation Publishing and is available now.

August 11, 2024 0

PREY . . . Between the covers

I have to confess that I haven’t read a crime novel written by a New Zealand writer since, years ago, I blitzed the Inspector Alleyn stories by Ngaio Marsh. Although she was born and died in Christchurch, those stories are quintessentially English. Vanda Symon, by contrast, has written a successful series featuring Dunedin cop Sam Shephard, and Prey is the latest of these. Sam has returned from maternity leave, and almost immediately the state of open war between herself and boss, DI Greg Johns, resumes. He immediately gives her a cold case to work on. Twenty five years earlier, a priest at St Paul’s Cathedral, was found dead at the foot of some stone stairs. He had been stabbed, but also had a broken neck. Despite every best effort, no-one was ever arrested for the murder. And there is a problem. The Reverend Mark Freeman had a teenage daughter, Felicity. And now she is married to DI Johns.

As Sam struggles to adjust being back at work, and worries about ‘abandoning’ baby daughter Amelia (for those who like that sort of thing the author spares us no detail of the baby’s rather spectacular digestive system) she realises she has been handed a poison chalice. The crime scene has since been walked over by tens of thousands of pairs of feet, and there are a mere handful of people alive now who were connected to the case at the time. These are, in no particular order:
Yvonne Freeman, the murdered man’s widow. She has terminal cancer.
Felicity Johns, née Freeman, now married to DI Greg Johns.
DI Johns himself was on the investigating team as a young police constable.
Brendan Freeman, Felicity’s brother.
Mel Smythe, a young youth worker at the time of the killing. She has since become estranged from the church, and has fallen on hard times.
Aaron Cox, of Maori origin, and a former criminal. Mark Freeman had worked hard to put him on the straight and narrow path.

When Sam goes to interview Mel Smythe (for the second time) she finds her dead – stabbed with a kitchen knife, which makes the case very much a current murder investigation. But is it – and if so, how – connected to the death of Mark Freeman? It has to be said that in the first few pages of the book, a female witness watches, from behind a church pillar, a struggle between two people, one of whom is the Reverend Mark Freeman. Make of that what you will.

Sam Shephard is a very human creation with none of the foibles and weaknesses that many British writers love to give their police detectives. She is a proud mum and loyal partner to little Amelia’s father, fellow copper Paul Frost. She has a keen brain and a healthy sense of humour, and it is her intuition that allows her to finally realise she has been lied to, and thus crack the case open. This only happens, however, in the final pages of the novel, and not before we are led up many a garden path. The connections to the case of DI Johns and his wife only make more hot coals for Sam to walk over, and she faces an unenviable task of doing her job without becoming badly burned.

Vanda Symon creates a convincingly clammy picture of a wet and wintry Dunedin, and at the centre of it all, glowering over the wrongdoings of its congregation, is the menacing Victorian Gothic bulk of St Paul’s Cathedral. In addition to the gripping plot, Symon explores those eternal ingredients of all good crime novels – money, greed, shame, blackmail, hypocrisy and family secrets. Prey is published by Orenda Books and is available now.

August 8, 2024 1

WHISPERS OF THE DEAD . . . Between the covers

Lin Anderson’s battle-hardened forensic investigator Dr Rhona MacLeod returns to make another journey through the grisly physical mayhem that some human beings inflict on others. In a disused and vandalised farmhouse in Glasgow’s Elder Park, a man’s body has been found. His eyes and mouth have been sewn shut and, strapped to a metal chair, he has been thrown through an upstairs window. A trio of teenage scallies have been using the old building as a base for their minor law-breaking, and they are the first people to see the body,

In another part of the city, an American film crew have informed the police that their leading man is missing. With the assistance of DS McNab, who has interviewed the movie-makers, Rhona MacLeod becomes involved, and wonders if the missing actor is the mutilated corpse found in the park.

At the very beginning of the book Lin Anderson introduces what develops into a parallel plot thread. A woman called Marnie Aitken has served six years in prison for the murder of her four year-old daughter, Tizzy, despite the fact that no trace of Tizzy, dead or alive, has ever been found. Marnie is known to Rhona MacLeod, and to her colleague, psychiatrist Professor Magnus Pirie. On her release, Marnie – abused as a child and as a young woman – is placed in sheltered accommodation. She goes missing. but not before sending a bizarre gift to Rhona. It is a beautifully sewn and knitted doll, in the likeness of a young Highland dancer. Rhona realises its significance, as Tizzy Aitken was a promising dancer, but she is also appalled to see that the doll’s lips have been sewn shut with black thread. What message is Marnie sending?

Marnie is located at her old cottage on the Rosneath Peninsula, and but she returns to Glasgow, where the police find that she is linked – albeit at a tangent – the the killing of the man in Elder Park. Meanwhile, DS McNab – who was involved in the original investigation into Tizzy’s disappearance, but kicked off the case – has realised that the script and screenplay of the film – now abandoned after the disappearance of its star – is inextricably tangled up with the murder.

Right from the beginning of the novel, we know that Marnie still talks to Tizzy, and Tizzy still talks to her. Is this merely, as Magnus Pirie suggests, a grieving woman’s way of coping with her loss? Or is it something else? On the first page of the book, Marnie looks out of the window:

“It was at that moment the figure of a girl, dressed in a kilt and blue velvet jacket, arrived to tramp across the snow in front of the main gate. As though sensing someone watching, the girl stopped and turned to look over at her. Marnie stood transfixed, then shut her eyes, her heart hammering. ‘She’s not real. It’s a waking nightmare. When I look again, she won’t be there.’
And she was right.
When Marnie forced her eyes open, the figure had gone, or more likely, it had never been there in the first place except there were footprints in the snow to prove otherwise.”

When Rhona visits Marnie’s seaside cottage, she walks down to the beach where Tizzy used to go with her mother:

“The snow at sea level had gone and the muddy ruts were studded with puddles and the shape of footsteps leading both ways. Her forensic eye noted three in particular, ranging in size: a small childlike print, a medium one and a large one, going in both directions.”

Lin Anderson doesn’t resolve this for us. She leaves us to draw our conclusions, and I suppose it depends on how feel about Hamlet’s oft-quoted words to Horatio in Act 1 Scene 5 of the celebrated play. The police procedural part of this novel plays out in the favour of the good guys, but aside from this, Lin Anderson has written a thoughtful and moving account of the nature of grief, and the indelible legacy that the death of a child bequeaths. Whispers of The Dead was published by Macmillan on 1st August.