Hidden Power by
Judith Cutler
hbk out September 02
Published by Hodder
at £18.99
Judith Cutler has left her Birmingham college lecturer books to return to Detective
Sergeant Kate Power of the West Midlands Police, this book being the first of a new
series. For change of locale, Kate is seconded to Devon as an undercover officer to
investigate a suspected scam involving a time-share operation. One of Kate's gripes is
that she is never told what the scam is about - and to be frank, even the reader is left
slightly unclear at the end of the book. However, it is a good read, as are all Cutler books
- in this one, Kate, who has just passed her Inspector's exams, is reluctant to go to darkest
Devon just as she is taking up a love affair with one of her Superintendents, especially as
she has to assume the role of lowly office and toilet cleaner in the time-share
establishment. Even worse is that she is partnered by an aggressive, truculent local
detective officer. Their cover involves living together in a suburban house, acting the part
of a couple with a failing relationship, but her partner takes it too literally to the point of
physical abuse. In a ploy to get nearer to the manager of the complex, she gets too fond of
his family, breaking one of the rules of undercover work, which is never to get sorry for
the 'scrote', as the suspect is delightfully called in police parlance.
One of the baddies has a go at raping Kate, so in this book she gets a pretty hard time.
The only murder is very late in the book and seems rather incidental to the main story-
line.The author is pretty scathing about the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, so maybe
it's just as well that the jacket tells us that the next Power book will be set back in
Birmingham. Recommended to all Judith Cutler fans, but perhaps not the pick of the
crop.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
