Ash and Bone

By: John Harvey

Narrated by: Gordon Griffin

In his Cornish hideaway, retired Detective Inspector Frank Elder's solitary life is disturbed by a call from his estranged wife, telling him his seventeen-year-old daughter, Katherine, is running wild, unbalanced by a rape he feels he should have prevented. Meanwhile, in London, the capture of a violent criminal goes badly wrong, and Detective Sergeant Maddy Birch is uneasy about the reasons why, an uneasiness that is compounded when she starts to believe she is being stalked.

Maddy and Frank have a connection, a brief and clumsy encounter years before. Now their lives connect again when a second phone call persuades Elder out of retirement, only to find that a cold case has a devastating present-day impact...©2005 John Harvey (P)2006 W. F. Howes Ltd

Like Ian Rankin?

Somewhere I thought I read a review that likened this book to Ian Rankin's Rebus series. Maybe not, but that's why I chose it.

Like Rebus, Elder has a daughter who was criminally traumatized. He has been around a long time. But, and this is key, Elder lacks Rebus' sense of humor.

This book is entirely humorless. It plods along. It's bad guys are very creepy and awful. One dimensional. I gave the book two stars simply because it wasn't horrible. But I did fast forward through parts of it and easily followed the story. I would never compare this style of writing with Rankin's.