Above Suspicion by
Lynda Plante
hbk out October 04
Published by Simon Schuster
at £17.99
I've lost count of the number of books I've read in the last few years where
the plot revolves around a serial murderer, often of prostitutes, a profiling
psychologist and a woman detective, usually one with some past emotional
baggage, who is battling against aggressive male prejudice within the CID.
Patricia Cornwell popularised this format, with her other variant where the
lady is a pathologist, is usually hunted by a killer and has steamy affairs with
senior coppers.
This is another one, but still makes a good story, a straight police procedural
account where one knows 'whodunnit' early on and the plot is about how it
can be proved. Most of the action takes place in Central London.
Anna Travis, daughter of a former renowned detective, is pulled in as
Detective-Sergeant to assist DCI Langton, a forbidding widower. A series of
prostitute murders is, from the methodology, obviously the work of one man,
but the series is broken by the killing of a nice young girl. Anna forces a
discredited old cop, living in exile on the Costa de Crime, to tip her off
about a Manchester case many years before, where the MO was the same.
Suspicion soon falls on a glamorous actor, Alan Daniels, and the rest of the
book records the machinations of the police to nail the said actor. Anne
alternates between being brilliant and being slagged off by her colleagues
and inevitably ends up in bed with her taciturn boss. So many writers these
days insist on personal conflicts within the CID, making the men arrogant
foul-mouthed male chauvinists, whose every other word begins with 'F'.
After over forty years of working with detectives, though there are some
rough ones, I found most to be ordinary decent chaps. In this book, there
seems little appreciation of the atmosphere of a real CID, especially in the
hierachy of ranks. No detective-sergeant would be spoken to by constables
in the way portrayed here, even allowing for the fact that this was 'The Met',
an organisation looked down upon with scorn by other Forces.
There is a lot of detail about forensic science and pathology, but in spite of
the author's acknowledgements for helpful advice, there are a number of
errors, which it would be tedious to list.
As a story, it is a satisfying read, though one tends to get the impression that
it is a blueprint for another television mini-series - but is nevertheless an
absorbing tale.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Above Suspicion by
Lynda Plante
