September 12, 2011
Turnbull’s solid if low-key second Harry Vicary police procedural (after 2010’s Improving the Silence) begins with a disturbing discovery: the frozen body of Michael Dalkeith, an unfortunate young man who’s apparently been done in by the unusually frigid London winter. Even more chilling is that Dalkeith is lying on top of a shallow grave containing the savagely beaten remains of a young girl. Det. Insp. Harry Vicary and his enormously capable team, including an astute pathologist, visit Dalkeith’s scruffy rooming house, where they find some extremely nervous boarders and, in Dalkeith’s room, the emaciated, brutally strangled body of another young girl. The owner of the home, an ostensibly reputable and highly successful businessman, is shocked. The fully realized detective characters, who show intense loyalty to the job, keen and energetic minds, and an unusually strong moral code, make up for the minimal suspense.
November 1, 2011
The first body found on Hampstead Heath may have been a case of accident or suicide, but the second, buried in a shallow grave underneath, was certainly murdered. No one knows why Michael Dalkeith chose to lie out in Hampstead Heath in the bitter cold, dressed only in a thin jacket. Whatever his reason, it led to the young Irishman's death of exposure. But what makes DC Ainsclough call DI Harry Vicary (Improving the Silence, 2010) isn't Dalkeith's body; it's the skeletonized remains of a young woman buried just below. Medical examiner John Shaftoe concludes that this victim was battered to death many years before. To find who she was and why she died, Vicary probes the life of the fresher corpse. Dalkeith had recently left his wife Annie and their home in moderately-plush Palmers Green to live in a room in Kilburn managed by WLM Rents. The room is an accommodation rental—let for free to those willing to do "odd jobs" for WLM, explains J.J. Dunwoodie, the rental agent. None of which explains why Ainsclough and fellow DC Frank Brunnie find the body of a young Welsh runaway lying in Dalkeith's bed. A savage attack on Dunwoodie persuades Vicary that something is very wrong at WLM. But it takes persistence on his part, and the special talents of DC Penny Yewdall, to discover the extent of the corruption at WLM and its depraved owner Curtis Yates. Whether it's the London locale or a closer eye on the gritty details, Turnbull's Vicary series is edgier than his Hennessey and Yellich entries (Aftermath, 2011, etc.).
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October 1, 2011
Fans of Turnbull's Hennessey and Yellich series will immediately recognize his distinctive writing style and dry wit in this new series featuring London-based Detective Inspector Harry Vicary. In Vicary's second outing, he and his team must solve the puzzling case of a man's frozen body found on Hampstead Heath. Under the man's body, a shallow grave is discovered containing the remains of a young woman who appears to have been strangled. With this grisly discovery, the case turns from straightforward and routine to complex and dark, with a link leading to one of London's drug kingpins. A well-written, cleverly crafted police procedural that starts off slowly and builds to a tense finish.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)