Someone was praising this series (Chatterbox, was that you?) so I started with the first. Certainly ok, but I found it a little too much like many other books to really enjoy it. Or maybe it was one police procedural too many for me this year. ( )

This is the first novel in the Charlie Resnick series. I've read one or two in the distant past (not sure if this was one of the ones I've previously read), but I decided to check the series out in order. Based just on reading this one, they seem a bit tame/dated compared to more contemporary crime novels. This was definitely not very "gritty," especially compared to the Inspector Brant series I just finished.

This one involves a serial killer--but a serial killer with only 2 murders. Can you imagine a Jo Nesbo thriller with only 2 deaths? At first the two deaths aren't connected, but then the police learn that both murdered women had been meeting men through a dating service of sorts, this being written before wide spread computer use/on-line dating. Back then you wrote a profile, hired an anonymous P.O. box, and printed it in the newspaper. Very quaint.

While the ending seemed a bit rushed (and the perpretator's final actions a bit off), this was still an interesting blast from the past.

3 stars

First line: "She hadn't thought of him in a long time." ( )

Harvey has a quick-cut style that may take a little to get used to, i.e. scenes are often no slowly introduced or developed, but rather the reader is dumped into the middle of. Once comfortable with this, the reader is in for a grand British police procedural with jazz loving, 4-cat co-habitating Detective-Inspector Charlie Resnick. Charlie often seems to sensitive for his job, but he and his interesting squad make for an interesting quite-human team. ( )

Published thirty years ago, this was the first novel by John Harvey, and introduced his principal protagonist, Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick. Having grown up in the East Midlands, I was particularly drawn by the Resnick stories and their Nottingham setting. Just as with Ian Rankin’s books featuring Inspector Rebus, these stories featured real settings – places that I knew, and had visited myself, and could readily recognise from Harvey’s description.

Of course, it is customary now for fictional detectives to display certain quirks. Resnick is a lugubrious character, with quirks in abundance. He is almost obsessed with coffee, struggling in those days before the proliferation of high street coffee bars to find an espresso that is even vaguely palatable He is also very particular in his choice of sandwiches, which represent his staple for lunch, using a select handful of delicatessens that can satisfy his rigorous demands. He is also a keen adherent of traditional jazz, and has four cats, each named after a jazz maestro.

There is a strong undercurrent of melancholy throughout the novels (which goes beyond Resnick’s support of Notts County Football Club, although that in itself might well be sufficient source of melancholia to be going on with). As this novel opens, Resnick is giving evidence in the trial of a man charged with abusing his young daughter. This is peripheral to the main plot, but somehow sets the tone of all that follows. Resnick is oppressed by the knowledge that he is fighting a losing battle against the ravages of crime, and his feeling of despair seems to permeate the whole book.

The main plot concerns the murder of a young woman who is believed to have been killed by her former partner who had a history of violence. While he is in custody, however, another, similar murder occurs. The police have to reconfigure their approach, and we are left wondering whether a serial killer might be working in Nottingham.

Harvey writes marvellously – indeed, he is also an established poet and publisher in his own right – and his plots are soundly constructed. This is not a jolly book, but it does captures the reader’s attention right from the start, and then retains it. ( )

It was okay. I didn't care for the ending. ( )