Sins of the Fathers by
Patricia Hall
hbk out August 05
Published by Allison Busby
at £18.99
The twelfth in the well-known Thackeray and Ackroyd series based in
Yorkshire, with grim-faced DCI Michael Thackeray investigating violent
crimes, sometimes with the help and occasionally with the hindrance of
his journalist lover Laura Ackroyd, who works on the local paper, the
Bradfield Gazette.
In this story, Thackeray is called to a horrific scene in a lonely rural
house, where several children and their mother are found shot. Another
lad has fled and has died of exposure in a snowstorm, whilst another
young girl survives to hospital. Father has vanished in his Land-Rover
and all efforts to find him fail. Thackeray, with his chronic history of
family misery and a wife not long dead, is shattered by these events and
his girl-friend and his colleagues are concerned for his mental stability.
Much of the story revolves about the personalities in the afflicted village,
where the missing man was said to be a strange loner. Police efforts to
trace his background come to nothing and it becomes apparent that the
'spooks', the security services, are frustrating their efforts to investigate
the matter. Laura's own journalistic probings turn up more information,
but the unethical activities of a former lover, an unscrupulous London
reporter, get her into deeper trouble with Thackeray when they are made
public. When the Land-Rover is eventually found burnt-out in
Manchester, with an unidentified corpse inside, the plot thickens and
either a gangster or an IRA connection is suspected.
As always with Patricia Hall, the writing is tense and gripping with an
'un-put-downable' quality. If I were to have any mild criticism, it would
be that after reading a number of previous books in the series, I feel that
the author is now rather over-doing the aggro between Michael and
Laura. Though it is obviously a trade-mark of the series, the over –
weening depression and misery of Thackeray is making him such an
dismal character that is hard to accept that such an attractive, vivacious
red-head as Laura would put up with his indifference to her for so long.
Maybe in the next book, Patricia Hall can cheer him up a bit so that
readers can begin to empathise with him.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Sins of the Fathers by
Patricia Hall
