One Under by
Graham Hurley
hbk out January 07
Published by Orion
at £9.99
Born in 1946, Graham Hurley apparently left Cambridge with a degree in English
and several unpublished novels. He worked as a scriptwriter for Southern TV, and
progressed to being a distinguished director of documentaries. It is our good fortune that
he returned to writing and has had about sixteen novels published to date.
'One Under' is another in his DI Joe Farady series of police procedurals, and as
before Hurley draws on his knowledge and love for his one-time home Portsmouth. The
first train out of Portsmouth station enters Buriton tunnel, and slices a man in half who is
chained to the rails. DI Farady gets to lead the investigation into what could either be a
gruesome murder, or a bizarre suicide. In building his team, his first thought is to
recruit DC Paul Winter. Winter, a bit of a mavertick, is recovering from a serious brain
operation, but this does not hinder his investigative powers. He soon narrows down the
missing person list to one possibility. The trouble is, as he follows up on Alan Givens,
DNA results say the dead man is Mark Duley, a 'serial activist' and all-round violent
person. Undaunted, Winter persuades Farady that there is mileage in pursuing both cases
simultaneously. Duley interests both Winter and Faraday because of a possible
connection to drug baron Bazza MacKenzie. MacKenzie has eluded both men in the
past, and they would dearly love to implicate him in Duley's trip to Venezuela and
possible cocaine trafficking. But as Duley's private life is revealed, more personal issues
start to unfold.
Hurley started the DI Faraday series in 2000, when you might have thought the
genre didn't need another police series. But he brings something different to an
overworked medium. The procedural part – the collection and collation of large
quantities of raw data that make up real police work – is believable and yet never dull.
And attention to descriptive detail – of rooms and people – works well in this context.
The very nature of such an investigation – requiring a large team of officers – gives
Hurley the opportunity to present a big cast of characters that live and develop as the
stories progress. He carries off the difficult task of reintroducing his regular characters
each time without boring his regular readers. And at the same time still intrigues any
new audience. He is bold enough to let Faraday take a back seat in the investigation, as
he wrestles with the paperwork and his senior officers whilst Winter takes front of stage
in his natural role as instinctive bloodhound. The story begins in the dark of a train
tunnel, and finishes in the darkness of men's hearts.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
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One Under by
Graham Hurley
