Bristol DCI John Meredith is not at peace with the world. His wife and fellow police officer Patsy Hodge was seriously injured when she came face to face with a serial killer. Her physical injuries are, albeit slowly, healing. Mentally, however, she is shattered. Her relationship with Meredith is now fraught, riven with anxiety and tension.
At work, Meredith is saddled with an exasperating pair of cold case crimes. Decades ago, two young women, unknown to each other and years apart, caught trains from Bristol to London. Neither reached their destination, and their bodies were eventually discovered in separate locations in farmland near Reading. What links the two cases is that the forensics indicate that the two young women were not killed when they first disappeared. It seems that they lived for years before being killed. But where? And with whom? Doing what,? The timeline suggests that the first girl, Jasmine was killed in 2008/9, while Louise disappeared in 2010. Could Louise have been Jasmine’s successor, a replacement of some kind? Jasmine Jones was given up by her mother, put in care and then fostered. She married a man called Carl, but the relationship disintegrated when he had a fling with another woman. Louise Marshall was another woman anxious for a fresh start and a new job, but she found only violence and an unmarked grave.
As is often the way in crime fiction, we know the answer to the puzzle facing the investigators long before they do. In this case, there is a decidedly weird and disfunctional farming family who have a disconcerting habit of employing women as a sinister mix of housekeeper and bed-mate – and then killing them.
As involving as this is, the real beating heart of the book is John Meredith’s personal life. The scene where he meets up with his first true love (after Patsy ups sticks and goes to stay with relations in New Zealand) is brilliantly written, and so, so poignant. They wine and dine, make it back to her hotel and …. I am not going to spoil it for you, but it is the most emotionally intuitive piece of writing I have read for a long time.
John Meredith is an engaging and complex man. Realising that Patsy is mentally damaged, he is bowed beneath her slights, physical indifference, and emotional instability, but he never buckles. He hopes (rather than believes) that somewhere ahead are the sunlit uplands of the days before Patsy was so badly wounded. He wants to believe what Philip Larkin once wrote. “What will survive of us is love.” It is, at the end of the day, all he has to offer.
The dark secrets of Brandon farm are eventually exposed to sunlight and justice – after a fashion – is served. What will remain with me about this book, however, is the wonderfully observed account of Meredith’s personal life. Yes, we know that most fictional police Inspectors have tangled lives away from the job. I could start with Tom Thorne, Alan Banks and John Rebus, but CriFi buffs do not need me to continue the list, as it would be a long one. My last words of praise for this excellent novel are to say that the dialogue, copper to copper and Meredith to acquaintances and family, absolutely sparkles. Gone is published by 127 Publishing and is available now.
Jameson’s sister Claire has, for some time, fulfilled a mixed role of aunt, mother and babysitter to a teenage girl called Jane. Jane’s mother Lana, is a single mum, loving but chaotic, perhaps suffering from PTSD after several tours in conflict zones when she was a soldier in the army. Now she has disappeared, leaving Jane with no money for food or rent. Knowing of her mum’s fragile mental state. Jane was not initially alarmed, but when she began to investigate, after receiving no help from the police, she made several disturbing discoveries.
Lana disappeared on her birthday. Immediately before her disappearance she had received a mysterious card inviting her to play a game. The beautifully presented card bore the words, elegantly embossed in silver on cream:
Leona Deakin’s own experience and training in psychology gives this novel a framework of authenticity to which the more fanciful parts of the narrative can cling. It soon becomes clear to the reader that Deakin has presented a neat and convincing conjuring trick: the missing are no longer the victims – they are the ones to be feared; those left behind have become the prey.
The relationship between Bloom and Jameson is intriguing. It reminded me of the unresolved tension and undeclared love between Val McDermid’s doomed lovers Tony Hill and Carol Jordan. We are left to decide for ourselves what Augusta Bloom looks like; Deakin (right) suggests that she might be rather dowdy, an academic in flat shoes. She is certainly razor sharp mentally, however, and she plays a devastating human chess game with the organisation behind the birthday card disappearances.
he creative folk at Penguin Random House are certainly pushing the boat out in support of Gone, a new psychological thriller and the debut novel by former police psychologist Leona Deakin.
fullybooked2017 