Cruel As The Grave by
Meg Elizabeth Atkins
pbk out August 98
(Flambard Press)
at £6.99
On the surface, this novel has many familiar elements. The novel opens with the discovery of a dead woman in the River Chat. Detective Chief Inspector Sheldan Hunter leads the team of detectives investigating what they soon realise is murder. Hunter has pulled himself up from the slums of the nearby city, presumably Manchester, a world away from the genteel Cheshire village of Hambling where the body was found. But the victim is a woman from the city, a woman who came from the world that Hunter thought he had left behind. There is one obvious suspect - a foolish, though charming, middle-aged man with a taste for the ladies. His formidable and attractive niece is determined to try to help him.
From this the story opens out into a well-written, intricate and unusually interesting crime novel. The book works on many levels. The police procedural details seem completely authentic. So too does the perceptive social analysis - whether in the city or in the village - which explores areas most crime novels prefer to leave out. The plot is well constructed, with a satisfying twist at the end. Best of all, the characters and their motivations ring true.
Old sins cast long shadows. This is a novel that lingers in the memory. Meg Elizabeth Atkins triumphantly shows that the village cosy has considerable life in it - and that in her skilled hands it becomes very uncosy indeed.
(
Andrew Taylor
- author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series)
Cruel As The Grave by
Meg Elizabeth Atkins