I think I have read one of the Resnick novels before, without really enjoying it. Jon Harvey is coming to speak at our local library in a month or so’s time, so they are plugging his books.
This is the last (he says) Resnick novel and very good it is. The backdrop is the miner’s strike, specifically as it impacts on Nottingham where, I think, all the novels are set.
It is told both in the past and the present, some of it by the murderee and has a huge range of possible suspects. And also a lot of (mainly happily) retired policemen, whose memories of those events need to be dredged through by Resnick and his attractive black young female boss (the temptations of an affair are resisted by both character and author).
The retired/retiring policeman theme is prevalent in the detective novels I read, mainly due to the age of their authors.
A welcome discovery of a writer who I thought, maybe wrongly, I had tried and hadn’t liked. There are lots more.
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