{"id":3739,"date":"2013-02-15T07:22:33","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T07:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=3739"},"modified":"2013-02-16T06:47:08","modified_gmt":"2013-02-16T06:47:08","slug":"february-crime-round-up-by-n-j-cooper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=3739","title":{"rendered":"February Crime Round-Up by N.J. Cooper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths\u00a0 Published by Quercus<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cross Bones Yard by Kate Rhodes\u00a0 Published by Mulholland<\/strong><\/p>\n

The House on the Cliff by Charlotte Williams\u00a0 Published by Macmillan<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Scent of Death by Andrew Taylor\u00a0 Published by HarperCollins<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the most satisfying crime fiction it is rarely the murder and investigation that linger in the mind after the last page is turned.\u00a0 Readers remember the characters, their relationships and dilemmas as they are pushed to the edge of what they can bear, which is why so many enjoy series more than standalone novels.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This month sees the latest instalment in the life of Elly Griffiths’s archaeologist Ruth Galloway, as she looks into the murder of an old university friend, who may have discovered the body of King Arthur.\u00a0 If he has, the details of his find will overset centuries of myth and self-interest.\u00a0 Ruth is an overweight, forty-something, clever single mother of two-year-old Kate.\u00a0 Her best friend is a Druid who calls himself Cathbad and likes to wear a theatrical cloak.\u00a0Griffiths takes some unpromising ingredients and apparently unattractive characters and, with good jokes and an easy style, creates a world of such warmth and charm that I could swallow any number of mad Druids and exotic killings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Kate Rhodes also has deranged characters in her first novel, Cross Bones Yard<\/em>, which is led by psychologist Alice Quentin.\u00a0 She is quite as appealing as Ruth Galloway and much harder edged, working in a beautifully realized South London.\u00a0 Rhodes is an award-winning poet and writes with an immediacy that matches her fast-moving plot.\u00a0 When Alice is called in by the police to advise on murders that look like copies of a past husband-and-wife serial-killing spree, she has to face all her own demons.\u00a0 Daughter of a violent man who beat her and her mother and forced her brother to watch his brutality, Alice cannot commit herself to any relationship of her own and is, not surprisingly, drawn to precisely those men who will put her most at risk.\u00a0 Psychologically convincing, Cross Bones Yard<\/em> is set to be the start of an interesting series.<\/p>\n

Older than Alice, and less impressive professionally, is Jessica Mayhew,\"\"<\/a> the psychotherapist heroine of Charlotte Williams’s first novel, The House on the Cliff<\/em>.\u00a0 Mayhew’s latest client, Gwydion Morgan presents with a phobia against buttons and some dark secrets she must help him uncover.\u00a0 Williams, herself training to be a psychotherapist, bravely depicts her chosen trade in a way that will confirm the worst prejudices against it:\u00a0 without any scientific rigour, driven by fashion in and out of such potentially destructive territory as Recovered Memory, and practised in this fictional case by a woman so lacking in control (and supervision) that she can not only contemplate a sexual relationship with a client but actually indulge in plenty of hanky panky with him.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Unlike these three writers, Andrew Taylor looks back to the eighteenth century to uncover the emotions and behaviour that drive violent crime in The Scent of Death<\/em>.\u00a0 His investigator is Edward Savill, sent to New York during the American War of Independence to settle claims against the British government.\u00a0 Savill is lodging in the house of a judge when he becomes involved in the murder of one Roger Pickett, for which a runaway slave is soon convicted.\u00a0 Unconvinced, Savill finds the truth to be far more complicated, and, on the way, comes to understand a great deal about the workings of the human mind and heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some new February crime titles reviewed by N.J. Cooper<\/p>\n

In the most satisfying crime fiction it is rarely the murder and investigation that linger in the mind after the last page is turned. Readers remember the characters, their relationships and dilemmas as they are pushed to the edge of what they can bear, which is why so many enjoy series more than standalone novels.[…] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3739"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3769,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions\/3769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}