437 Pages: First Published 2011
Our Rating 4.5⭐s
You can find out more about Belinda Bauer...Here
- The Blurb...
In a small village where no stranger goes unnoticed, a local woman has been murdered in her bed.
This is PC Jonas Holly's first murder investigation. But he is distracted by anonymous messages that seem to come from the killer . . .
Is Jonas going to be able to solve the crime, whilst being taunted by a psychopath?
- Our Review...
In the sleepy little village of Shipcott on Exmoor nothing happens, nothing changes until the day it does. A paralysed old lady is murdered and the village bobby Jonas Holly ( played in my head inexplicably by Jimmy Carr, but a nice version) is powerless to help protect his people. The killer begins to leave cryptic notes for Jonas as the out of town, bid city detective swoops in with his entourage. The Detective inappropriately named Detective Marvel is a crude, opinionated bully. Think Gene Hunt from "Life on Mars" and you would be about right. He disrespects Jonas. More kiliings of people deemed a burden on society happen. Jonas tries to help the investigation but he also needs to care for his disabled wife. In addition The dark history of the seemingly idyllic village resonates throughout the investigation.
So the scene is set for the hunt for the killer.
Belinda Bauer is a very gifted writer. She can create compelling, deep and dark characters that are nuanced and multilayered. However the real genius is in mixing very dark, very relevant humour to situations that shouldn't be humorous to the average sensibility. I realise she is a crime writer and as such death is something that happens in her stories but she takes the emotional baggage of death and right and wrong and moulds them into a challenging, emotional atmosphere that envelopes the narrative and demands debate. This is true for the other novels of hers that I have read namely Rubbernecker, Blacklands, Snap and Exit. To simplify she blends dark characters, dark humour and death into a wonderful thought provoking story. Often in the end nobody wins. A bit like real life then?
- Selected Quotes...
Jonas understood how almost everything important happens underneath, and away from public view – that signage and medals and headlines are just the tip of the village iceberg, and that real life is shaped long before and far below the surface in the blue-black depths of the community ocean.
She had always liked horror films. As a teenager they had just been a way to allow a boy to put his arm around her at the movies without feeling as though she was being a slut.
Marvel watched the empty ribbon of tarmac lined by dirty brown moor race at them out of blackness and disappear as soon as the lights had passed over it. It was like travelling through space, or a lower intestine.
She’d pat his hand and look into the past, which was somewhere over his left shoulder.
Robert Springer was both an ardent horseman and an ardent smoker – two hobbies that Marvel gathered should be kept apart, like wives and girlfriends.
the police grapevine had whispered of Marvel squeezing the facts to make them fit a suspect – or squeezing that suspect to make him fit the facts.
It made him think of his nan sellotaping names to her nick-nacks, so they’d all know who was getting what when she died.
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