Dead Sight by
Glenn Chandler
pbk out June 05
(Hodder)
at £6.99
This is the second in the Madden series, based around DI Steve Madden of
Brighton CID. Written by the creator of Taggart, this is another good, solid
British police whodunnit, with the excellent characterisation that is the
hallmark of a first-class scriptwriter.
In the previous novel, Madden had the extreme mental trauma of being
called to a particularly brutal murder, to find that the victim was his only
son. This second tale also provides him with a lot of grief, in more ways than
one. Still deeply in love with his divorced wife - but sleeping with his part-
Indian detective sergeant - he creeps towards a reconciliation, but a spanner
is repeatedly thrown into the works by the disruption caused by several
murders.
At the outset, he is called by an ageing fortune-teller, whom he fancied when
a youth, who informs him that she has had a client who she feels is evil and who
is a potential serial killer. Stumped by the fact that he can do nothing about
future homicides, he shrugs it off, but a few days later she is found murdered.
The story ramifies into the occult under-belly of that most peculiar town,
Brighton, and he becomes embroiled with mystic healing, witches and Tarot-
card readers. Involved with a feud with another DI who fouled up the
investigation of his son's death, the two-way pull of his mistress and ex-
wife, poor Steven has two murders of children landed on him, as well as a
run-in with a big-time local villain. For a variety of reasons, he becomes
even more guilt-ridden by the end of the book, and even manages to get
shot.
A very good yarn, from which cardboard characters are noticeably absent.
Apart from the literary excellence, what endeared me to the book was the
scorn that he has his lesbian pathologist pour upon her television
counterparts, deriding the nonsense that is given them to portray in some
well-known forensic series that the law of defamation prevents me from
naming - Taggart not being one of them!
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Dead Sight by
Glenn Chandler
