Category Archives: forensic thriller

Review: Death Mask by Kathryn Fox

Posted on by
10

The first book I will count towards this year’s Aussie Authors challenge is Kathryn Fox’s fifth novel which I was curious to read because it tackles a very topical and complex issue that has certainly had its share of media attention in recent years.

When Sydney-based forensic physician Anya Crichton is asked to consult a patient who has returned from her honeymoon with sexually transmitted infections she believes she’s being unnecessarily involved in a simple case of infidelity. Given the woman’s husband has tested negative for the infections, Anya assumes that Hannah Dengate is lying when she claims to have had no sexual partners other than her husband. However the case soon turns into something all together more unsavoury and leads Anya into a new field of research: the psychology of male team sports players and their attitudes to sexual assault. She is then asked to go to the US to discuss her research and provide information about what constitutes sexual assault to elite footballers but soon becomes embroiled in another case of possible sexual assault by a group of sports stars.

It’s not my place to tell writers how to do their jobs but I thought the first 50 pages of Death Mask was a bit like a long, slightly lecturing prologue. If instead the book had begun with Anna in the US and then introduced her previous experience with the relevant issues via flashbacks or some other mechanism I think the story would have held more suspense from the outset. However, once the book does get going it flows very smoothly and quickly and almost always manages to avoid being preachy. There were a couple of sections where this was not so but with such sensitive material it would have been difficult to avoid all together. The book not only explores the attitudes to women by some sports stars (and their fans) but also looks at the exploitation of the players themselves by team owners and others whose aims conflict with the best interests of the players’ health and wellbeing. This is one of those instances where fiction has examined complex social issues in more depth and with more acuity and balance than I’ve ever seen in the talk-radio fueled hype of mainstream media when similar events happen in the real world.

I have read all of the books featuring Anya Crichton but I must admit I have never particularly liked her as a character. Here though Fox seems to have toned down Crichton’s superwoman traits and made her more human and believable. Perhaps it is because for most of the book she is in the unfamiliar environment of New York dealing with participants of a game she knows nothing about and so can’t be quite so superior as she has been in previous novels. Her genuine empathy for all the victims she encounters, including those who are in turn perpetrators of violence gives the book a real warmth. The book is also populated by other very credible characters, including both victims of and perpetrators of sexual assault.

After its first 50 pages Death Mask has one of the most compelling and creative storylines I’ve encountered in ages. In many ways is a much broader book than pure crime fiction as it examines the psychology of team sports from all angles in a thought-provoking way that is far-removed from the way we normally the subject addressed in the media. It is balanced not only in the way it looks at these issues but also in the mixture of fiction and fact that are incorporated into the story. I’d recommend this novel to anyone, especially those with any kind of involvement in or fascination with professional team sports though, sadly, the people who most need to read something like this will probably never do so. A final point in the book’s favour is that it could easily be read independently of the previous novels in the series.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Death Mask has also been reviewed at Aust Crime Fiction

I have read all of Kathryn Fox’s previous novels but only 2 since starting this blog Skin and Bone (a standalone novel) and  Blood Born (the third to feature Dr Anya Crichton and predecessor to Death Mask)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 4.5/5
Author website http://www.kathrynfox.com/
Publisher Pan MacMillan Australia [2010]
ISBN 9781405039956
Length 352 pages
Format trade paperback
Book Series The 4th book featuring Dr Anya Crichton
Source I bought it

Review: Lethal Factor by Gabrielle Lord

Posted on by
5

Jack McCain is a former detective and now a scientific analyst with the Australian Federal Police in Canberra. In Lethal Factor, the second novel in which he has featured, he is involved with several cases simultaneously including the brutal murder of a nun in a local convent and the death of a fellow scientist from what is thought to be anthrax. McCain’s personal life causes almost as much drama as his work and in this installment his daughter is threatened by a crooked ex-cop and McCain’s ex-wife makes claims that he once sexually abused his daughter.

As I mentioned when I discussed Lord’s first novel Fortress one of her strengths is the research she puts into her subjects and once again this is evident in Lethal Factor. There is lots of science in this novel and Lord has incorporated a good amount of realistic detail, including the depiction of the time it takes for rigorous scientific testing processes to be completed properly (i.e. the book takes place closer to real time than CSI time).

There really is a lot going on in this novel and as none of the cases really overlap it probably stretches the bounds of credibility a little to think that one man would be involved in so many disparate cases, especially as he has a habit of going out to conduct interviews as he would have when he was a detective and seems to spend half his time driving between Sydney and Canberra (roughly 3 hours each way). Still, none of the threads become lost and they are all quite fascinating. Although the initial set pieces of each case are ‘ripped from the headlines’ dramatic ones, the resolutions are all realistically domestic in scale, concerning age-old human foibles like vengeance, greed and envy.

Ten years ago when I read the first book in this series I was probably a lot less forgiving than I am now about the fact that Jack McCain does not always do the right, or even legal thing but as I get older I find it easier to accept these types of flaws and consequently I liked Jack more in this novel. I also liked the depiction of his 18-year old daughter Jacinta who seemed to strike just the right balance of childishness and maturity.

I do recommend Lethal Factor as a top-notch scientific procedural with a complex, intriguing plot. For those overseas, who might struggle to find this novel you could try any of Lord’s standalones or perhaps one of the four books from her series featuring Gemma Lincoln who heads up a private security firm.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Lethal Factor has also been reviewed at Crime Down Under

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3.5/5
Publisher Hodder Headline [2003]
ISBN 0733617212
Length 451 pages
Format trade paperback
Source I bought it

Review: Blood Born by Kathryn Fox

Posted on by
5

Teenager Giverny Hart was brutally raped and the trial of her attackers, several brothers from the Harbourn family, was recently declared a mistrial so she must go through the whole, excruciating exercise again. On the morning Giverny is to give evidence in the second trial, forensic physician Anya Crichton and counsellor Mary Singer arrive at her house for moral support and to escort her to Court only to find her near death from hanging. Frantic attempts fail to save Giverny’s life and to compound matters these attempts appear to have obliterated crucial evidence of whether she was murdered or committed suicide. Having been the one who tried to save Giverny, Anya feels even more guilty about this when two sisters are raped on the night the Harbourn brothers are released from remand and evidence soon points to at least some of them being responsible for this horrific new crime.

Blood Born is a very solidly plotted forensic thriller which more than holds its own against its well-known competition from the likes of Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs. Fox is a  doctor with a special interest in forensic medicine and it shows both in the scope in the detail provided here. The forensic details of injuries perpetrated upon the various victims is fairly gruesome at several points, though it never felt gratuitous or particularly sensationalist. Nor did the ‘ick factor’ detract from the intertwining stories which I found very compelling and far more believable than many in this genre. There are no rampaging serial killers here, just ‘ordinary’ suburban evil that, unhappily, is far easier to imagine than Hannibal Lecter types.

Despite enjoying the story I was left a little disappointed by the book. Fox tackles some weighty issues here such as the systematic failure of the legal system to achieve anything approaching justice for several victims, including Giverny, the two subsequent rape victims and all of their families.  I wished we’d spent time delving into it more thoroughly. Another topic tantalisingly glimpsed was the age-old issue of whether it is upbringing or genetic code that determines one’s behaviour and, again, I would happily have spent more time exploring this issue.

Heaven knows there are plenty of similar thrillers that never bother to do anything more than pile up the body count so I should be (and am) grateful that the book bothered to explore other issues at all but I can’t help feeling let down that this was done a little too superficially for my tastes. It’s probably not that helpful but I am reminded of Susan Hill’s The Pure in Heart which I thought managed to achieve a more satisfying balance between straight-forward storytelling and the exploration of broader social issues.

My other quibble with the book is that I’m not particularly enamoured of Anya Chrichton as a protagonist. Mostly this is because I think she’s a bit too good to be true in her unwavering selflessness and devotion to womankind (my 15-year old niece would soon be making gagging motions if she encountered Anya). But in Blood Born she also displays a rather astonishing willingness to believe the worst of people who she claims as friends, particularly lawyer Dan Brody who on two occasions she assumes to be behaving immorally without really discussing either situation with him.

Though set in Sydney I did not discern a single element that identified it as a particularly Australian story which is, I suspect, a deliberate decision of the author’s because I’m told such things make a difference when trying to sell international publishing rights, particularly for the US market.

Blood Born tells a story that is grim but also credible and engaging and does so in such a way that it’s quite difficult to put down (my copy has pasta sauce stains on it because I tried, semi-successfully, to read and stir concurrently). I do applaud Fox for attempting to do more than merely tell a tale though I would have preferred the book to tackle one ‘big’ issue in more depth. However, the writing is first-rate and, having read all of Fox’s published fiction to date, I’ll be lining up for the next one.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3.5/5 (though I genuinely did oscillate between 3.5 and 4; on a less disgruntled day I might have leaned the other way)

Publisher: Pan Macmillan [2009]; ISBN: 9781405039314; Length 327 pages; Setting: Australia, present-day

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Blood Born has been reviewed at Mysteries in Paradise and The Book Bag

Here at Reactions to Reading I read and reviewed Fox’s Skin and Bone in February last year. It features one of the minor characters in Blood Born but the two can be read independently. I read Fox’s earlier two books in my pre-blogging days.

Crime Fiction Alphabet – V is for Vanish

Posted on by
4

We’re in the home stretch alphabet-wise and it’s time to discuss the work of American writer Tess Gerritsen. Vanish is the fifth of Gerritsen’s eight published novels to feature Boston detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles and it tackles a couple of subjects with surprising sensitivity for a thriller. It opens rather explosively with Isles about to undertake an examination of one of her ‘clients’ who is thought to have committed suicide when suddenly the woman’s eyes open. She is rushed from the morgue to the hospital where things really start to go awry as she kills a security guard and takes some hostages, including a heavily pregnant Jane Rizzoli.

Without wanting to give away too much more in the way of plot I will say that the book deals with the subject of human trafficking and it does so very well. Of course it’s not the first book to deal with the topic but in depicting the life of a trafficked woman in flashback it gives what feels like a pretty realistic portrayal of how easily such things happen. In fact this aspect was a highlight of the book for me: the way it depicts the notion of an  ’American dream’ still being a palpable force for many people outside the country. Having ‘lost’ a brother to the American dream (i.e. he moved there permanently more than 20 years ago though his defection has proven useful as a holiday destination) I thought Gerritsen did a really great job of depicting the longing that many people have for what they believe America can offer them and how, if you’ve a nasty streak in you, it is easy to exploit people’s desire to attain that dream.

On one level this is a sold and fast-paced thriller about a desperate young women who is the victim of some vicious criminals and the almost ubiquitous government cover-up  that accompanies such tales these days. However, I liked the fact that the book had another layer of interest beyond the thrills and threw in some small p politics for good measure. I’ve never quite warmed to the character of Maura Isles, though she is more credible than Kay Scarpetta or Temperence Brennan, but I do like Jane Rizzoli who I’ve always thought of as a slightly more together version of Elizabeth George’s Barbara Havers. This is my favourite of the Rizzoli/Isles series and the good news is I think it’s perfectly readable as a standalone.

Crime Fiction Alphabet – P is for Postmortem

Posted on by
7

My contribution to the Crime Fiction Alphabet this week is a discussion of former crime reporter and forensic analyst Patricia Cornwell’s debut novel, Postmortem. It was published in 1990, won the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity awards in a single year and ushered in a new sub-genre of crime fiction in which forensics is king. The success of this book and its follow-up novels is thought to have influenced a swag of similar writers (including Kathy Reichs, Tess Gerritsen and Karin Slaughter) and also TV shows like CSI.

As Postmortem opens Dr Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for Richmond Virginia, is sleeping uneasily. For each of the previous three weeks a woman had been strangled to death on Friday night and Scarpetta worries there will be another death. When the phone call from Detective Pete Marino comes at 2:33AM on Saturday morning she is called to another scene where there are few clues to the perpetrator of the horrid murder. Scarpetta and Marino work with FBI Profiler Benton Wesley to track the killer down using what little evidence they can find as well as manipulating the media to play with the killer’s head.

Several elements of this book would, today, read like hackneyed clichés but Cornwell was breaking new ground when she released Postmortem. For example, at that time the DNA profiling was a relatively new technique but it is incorporated cleverly into the story. Having such a strong female character as the protagonist of the book, especially one engaged in such a gruesome activity as dissecting dead people, was something else that was something of a departure for crime fiction at that time. Kay Scarpetta is a long way from Miss Marple.

I can recall thoroughly enjoying Postmortem (as much as you can enjoy a book in which women are dying horribly). There was a genuine puzzle to solve and the characters did engage me and, although violence was graphically depicted it did not seem to be out of step with the story or my own sensibilities. I read the subsequent novels as they were published and though Point of Origin (book #9 in the series) was the last one I actually liked I slogged it out right up until 2004′s Trace (book #13) which I deliberately left on a bus after finishing because I thought it was one of the worst books I’d ever read. I haven’t read a Scarpetta novel since (though I did have a go at one of Cornwell’s Win Garano novellas last year).

I’m not entirely sure if it’s me that has changed or Cornwell’s writing. From my perspective the plots seemed to get both more graphically violent and more ridiculously unbelievable. In Trace for example a character who has been dead for several books makes a miraculous reappearance accompanied by a nonsensical cover story. When combined with the ludicrous things that Scarpetta’s niece Lucy (computer genius, FBI superstar and borderline psychopath) gets away with this direction for the series consigned it to the ‘jumped the shark’ category for me. However, I try not to let my later disappointment overshadow the fact that Postmortem is a great piece of crime fiction.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

About 18 months ago Cornwell was the featured author on the BBC World Book Club and Postmortem was the book under discussion. You can listen to the show’s archive in which Cornwell is questioned by the show’s host and its audience should you be so inclined (the link will open your computer’s streaming audio player).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My previous contributions to the Crime fiction alphabet are

  • A is for Absolution [Caro Ramsay]
  • B is for Bones [Jan Burke]
  • C is for Contest [Matthew Reilly]
  • D is for Deadlock [Sara Paretsky]
  • E is for Entombed [Linda Fairstein]
  • F is for Fortress [Gabrielle Lord]
  • G is for Gambit [Rex Stout]
  • H is for Heartsick [Chelsea Cain]
  • I is for Inheritance [Keith Baker]
  • J is for Jigsaw [Anthea Fraser]
  • K is for Kisscut [Karin Slaughter]
  • L is for Lost [Michael Robotham]
  • M is for Marker [Robin Cook]
  • N is for Nerve [Dick Francis]
  • O is for Outsider [John Francome]

    • Crime Fiction Alphabet: K is for Kisscut

    Posted on by
    7

    For this week’s contribution to the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme I’ll take a look at Karin Slaughter’s Kisscut which I rated a 4 out of 5 when I read it back in 2004. It is the second of Slaughter’s Grant County series and, like all the books, focuses on dark topics. As it opens a teenage girl is threatening to shoot an older boy in the car park of the Heartsdale skating rink. Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver, who is at the rink on a date with his ex-wife Sara (who is also the area’s Coroner), is forced to shoot the girl to save the boy. During the girl’s autopsy Sara discovers that the girl has been subjected to years of abuse. Eventually police uncover a ring of incest and pedophilia that is truly hideous.

    Putting aside for a moment the issue of the graphic violence in this series Kisscut is a taut narrative full of engaging characters. The relationship between Sara and Jeffrey is nicely explored with the two being former husband and wife but still needing to work together and, tentatively, thinking about the idea of re-kindling their romantic relationship. One of Jeffrey’s officers, Lena Adams, is also an interesting character having survived her own kidnap and rape and struggling to deal with the death of her sister. Because I did find this book so riveting I was very disappointed that the series deteriorated to the point of dullness and silliness as I described earlier this year when I reviewed Skin Privilege (the sixth book in the series). Whereas in Kisscut I found the characters interesting by the time they’d each had a half-dozen increasingly absurd tragedies in their relatively young lives they were more like caricatures by the time it came to Skin Privilege and the plotting had become far less taught too.

    When it comes to the graphic nature of the content I can’t say Slaughter changed much over time. All the books, including Kisscut (which has a truly awful set of villains) have been about dark issues and have incorporated violence and explicit depictions of most of the horrid things one human being can do to another. However when the story is good and the characters believable, as in Kisscut, I can stomach such content as it doesn’t feel gratuitous. It’s when there’s nothing but descriptions of horrible mutilations and general despair and misery that I find myself resenting the graphic nature of books like this.

    By about book four in this series I think the quality starts to seriously suffer but I try not to let that cloud my judgement of the earlier books, like Kisscut, which were solid examples of their sub-genre.

    Review: Skin Privilege by Karin Slaughter

    Posted on by
    11

    Title: Skin Privilege (6th in the Grant County series) (Beyond Reach in the US)

    Author: Karin Slaughter

    Publisher: Arrow Books [2007]

    ISBN: 978-0-09-948184-3

    No. of Pages: 547

    Sara Linton is a paediatrician and medical examiner in small town Georgia. The book opens with her being submitted to a deposition in a malpractice case which, while offering a valid insight into what’s wrong with health care in many countries these days, has nothing much to do with anything else. I suppose the fact that the entire town turns on her even though no case has been proven does provide a motivation for her to accompany her husband Jeffrey, the Sheriff of the same small town, out of town. When Jeffrey learns that his detective, Lena Adams, has been arrested in a different small town after she was discovered catatonic at the site of an explosion he and Sara set off to find out what happened. Lena escapes custody, the bodies start to pile up and everyone chases their tails for a while.

    I’ve read the previous five books in this series and while they’re not my favourites of the genre I’ve always thought they were perfectly servicable, if a little incredible. I can’t say the same for Skin Privilege.  Firstly it’s long. Unnecessarily so. This tiny extract might give you an idea why I think that

    Jeffrey didn’t want to tie up his cell phone so he picked up the receiver by the couch and used his calling card to check their messages at home. No one had called, so he hung up and dialed the station. He entered the code and accessed his work voice mail.

    Most of the book is as yawn-inducing as this passage. It is so full of such irrelevant details and so devoid of actual plot advancement that it reminded me of one of my favourite Monty Python sketches which tells the tale of an insurance salesman to whom nothing happens (if you go to the link do yourself a favour and listen to the 2 minute sketch). This slowness is combined with an utterly annoying structure, the book switches point of view and moves back and forwards in time in a way that completely fails to build up any tension, and by the time Slaughter starts the actual story (somewhere around page 430) I was past caring. The shock ending that had fans talking lost a lot of its impact for me because I was just so thrilled to be finished.

    Then there’s the credibility factor. Between them Sara and Lena have been raped by a stranger, lost a sister to a serial killer, nearly lost a different sister to a different killer, been beaten and raped by a white supremacist boyfriend and had an abortion. And all of that took place before this book starts. So I found it impossible to believe the things that happened to either of these women in this book. Slaughter’s depiction of a small town turning on a much loved children’s doctor didn’t ring true at all, and nor did the string of events that happened around Lena. The secrets she discovered about her own family history were simply preposterous given the “everyone knows everyone’s business” picture of small town life Slaughter had gone to great lengths to depict. The rampant corruption at the heart of the story was equally improbable (I had the same reaction to it as I always do to those September 11 conspiracy theories). At some point very early on the “it’s gone too far” switch in my brain was flicked and I spent the rest of the book snickering as the trauma count piled up around each woman.

    All of this was wrapped up in a layer of misery that made finishing this book feel like a punishment rather than the diversion it ought to have been. I can’t imagine too many true fans of the series were enamoured of the book and if you haven’t read any of the Grant County series I wouldn’t recommend you start here.

    My rating 1/5.

    Other stuff

    Reviewed at Material Witness

    Slaughter’s next book, titled Undone in the US and Genesis for the rest of us, is due out in July 2009. It’s apparently set three years later than this book and looks to join the Grant County series with Slaughter’s Will Trent series. I’ve yet to decide if I’ll give it a go after the disappointment of this one although the first Will Trent book was one of my favourite reads of last year (narrowly missing out on a place in my top ten).

    Review: Devil Bones by Kathy Reichs

    Posted on by
    8

    Title: Devil Bones

    Author: Kathy Reichs

    Publisher:William Heinemann [2008]

    ISBN: 978-0-4340-1466-8

    No of Pages: 304

    I normally start out my reviews with a brief synopsis of events that take place in the first 40-50 pages of a book but in all honesty I can’t think of more than a sentence to say about this one. Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist, is called in when a skull is found under the flooring of an old house in North Carolina. Nothing else that develops the plot in any meaningful way happens before page 75. There’s a history lesson about the town of Charlotte, a swag of stultifying detail about Brennan’s work life and some snippets about what she has to eat in her fridge but I’m pretty sure none of that is going to make anyone rush out to get this book.

    The only word that seems to fit this book is dull. If pressed to expand I would, in Douglas Adams fashion, qualify that description by saying mostly dull. The first third of the book could have been written by anyone with access to Google. It’s almost as if Brennan (or Reichs) is lecturing one of her undergraduate classes as she lists in minute detail the dimensions of the bones she has found, details the major deities of several religions and continues a frightfully uninteresting internal monologue about the object of 11 books worth of sexual tension. Yawn. The plot gets slightly better for the last two thirds but it’s not even close to being gripping. I found myself skim-reading long passages of technical stuff and groaning at the portentous statement at the end of each chapter. The resolution to the mystery element was predictable and the final lecture on America’s culture of fear was patronising.

    In case you’re wondering I have read Reichs before. In fact I’ve read all the books in this series. I rated the last one, Bones to Ashes, a 4 but the two installments prior to that only rated a 2 on my personal scale. The thing is I can’t decide if Reichs’ writing has deteriorated over the years or my reading tastes have altered during that same period. Maybe it’s a little (or a lot) of both. In the past I’ve felt Reichs has had a genuine interest in exploring the topics she’s used as the basis for her plots, such as in Grave Secrets which dealt with human rights abuses and ’the disappeared’ of 1980′s Guatemala. In Devil Bones it felt like she’d drawn voodoo out of a hat filled with random plot elements and threw in a few facts and figures alongside the dead bodies and danger. I’m firmly convinced the only person who had less interest in this book than I did is Reichs herself.

    I’m done with this series.

    My rating 1/5

    Review: Skin and Bone by Kathryn Fox

    Posted on by
    2

    Title: Skin and bone

    Author: Kathryn Fox

    Publisher: MacMillan [2007]

    ISBN: 978-0-06-135333-8

    Kate Farrer has been on extended leave from the NSW Police Force after she was kidnapped and tortured in the line of duty. She’s asked to return from leave early and partner a new Homicide detective, Oliver Parke, when an unidentified body is found in a house that was set on fire. Just as the investigation of this case is getting underway the two are transferred to a high profile missing person enquiry and there are also rumblings of an internal investigation into one or all of the team members.

    More of a police procedural than Fox’s previous two books Skin and Bone has lots of plot threads on the go concurrently. It reminded me of a Jack Frost book with several cases being juggled by the investigators and the reader never being sure which elements of which story will turn out to be important. When done well, as is the case here, this makes for very entertaining reading because it maintains your attention for the duration and is probably more reflective of reality than one where the detective can concentrate on a single case.

    Another sign of above-average writing is that the forensic elements of the investigations are well integrated into the story rather than the long-winded ‘look at all the research I did’ passages that fill lesser novels. Fire is in the news in a big way in Australia at present and so it was a bit difficult to read the more gruesome details about what happens to a body during a fire but it’s not Fox’s fault I happened to pick up this book just now. Importantly, at no time did I feel that the details which were included were put there for any ghoulish purpose.

    Most of the people on the investigative team are well fleshed out even if some are wholly un-likable. The interplay between the two main characters was particularly good. I’m bored by unresolved sexual tension being the driving force behind such relationships (frankly it always feels like the easy way out for writers) and I found it refreshing to the relationship grow and change without that element. And while I don’t have to like my characters to appreciate the craft that goes into creating them it certainly doesn’t hurt. Both Kate and Oliver appealed to me greatly; having enough foibles to be interesting but not so many as to be unbelievable. Kate’s progress as she dealt with the psychological issues of having been abducted was very credible. I hadn’t thought about it much before but there are many fictional coppers who I’d be wary of in the real world whereas I found myself thinking we could do a lot worse than a police force full of Kates and Olivers.

    I would thoroughly recommend this fast-paced, entertaining and ultimately satisfying novel.

    My rating 4/5

    Other stuff

    Reviewed on the Australian Crime Fiction Database

    Reviewed on Aust Crime Fiction

    Kathryn Fox’s previous two books feature forensic pathologist Anya Crichton are Malicious Intent and Without Consent