Fury by
G M Ford
pbk out February 03
(Macmillan)
at £10.99
The jacket blurb says 'a first novel in the Frank Corso series', so presumably more are in the
pipeline and I suspect that they will do well, as he is a compelling writer with the added bonus of a
wry sense of humour.
This Frank Corso is a talented journalist who was fired from a New York newspaper some years
earlier for fabricating a story. He ended up in Seattle, where an idiosyncratic woman newspaper-
owner gave a him a job writing features, though he keeps a low profile, seeking almost total
anonymity. He is persuaded to look into a story where the major witness to a series of murder-
rapes retracts her evidence only a few days before Walter Leroy Himes, the man convicted, is due
to be executed. Albeit reluctantly, Frank teams up with a rather weird woman photographer from
the paper and sets about unravelling the urgent problem, as the police have now persuaded the girl
witness to retract her retraction. They delve into the three-year old conviction and with a mixture
of police and FBI obstruction and covert disclosure, find evidence that shakes the case against
Walter – at considerable personal danger to themselves.
This is a 'can't-put-downer' as both the story and the style grabs the attention.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Fury by
G M Ford
