REview by Malcolm Martland on show 1st October 2009.
Yet again I succumbed to the latest Val McDermid crime novel featuring the old duo of profiler Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan. These 2 are very fond of each other but are not actually an item – Carol even lives in the basement flat of Tony’ house.
A new boss arrives at Bradfield Metropolitan Police and one of his first actions is to inform Carol Jordan that he wants her to stop investigating cold cases and also to use trained police profilers instead of Tony Hill who he thinks is too expensive and he is also suspicious about Carol giving all the profiling work to her best friend.
Meanwhile a killer is loose – grooming carefully chosen teenagers on a social networking site called Rigmarole – I looked it up on Google and there is actually a networking site with that name – for the fans of Val McDermid. Anyway – the killer always uses a two letter handle like ZZ or DD and promises the victims that their secrets will be revealed – when they meet. The first victim is a girl who is drugged and asphyxiated with a polythene bag – then genitally mutilated – but this occurs not in Bradfield but Worcester – but cases of boys being lured away and found dead with the same MO soon occur around Bradfield too – the situation is made even worse when one of the victims mothers has a heart attack and dies while identifying the body. Tony Hill is off bounds for profiling the Bradfield cases but is invited to Worcester to help their police while Bradfield bring in one of their own profilers – who of course turns out to be completely incompetent.
It is Tony who realises the cases are connected and with the assistance of a friend finds that most of the network messaging originates in and around Manchester. Using some pretty slick number plate recognition from the CCTV on the M5 slip road into Worcester around the time of the first victims disappearance they narrow down possible suspect cars and visit a garage owner, Bill Carr, who conveniently just acts as a registration address for his cousin, Warren Davy, who lives out on the moors – it is all a bit far fetched even if theoretically possible. And DNA evidence reveals that all the cases so far are half siblings – their father being Warren Davy who had been a sperm donor 15 years previously before having a vasectomy – which he fails to tell his child desperate partner Diane Patrick. Surprisingly the team never finds Warren’s body! – but I’m giving too much away.
In the meantime Carol’s team are also unearthing cold case evidence on the disappearance 15 years previously of a Danuta Barnes and her infant child – the chief suspect being her husband Nigel Barnes – who of course denies any part in their disappearance. But recently their old house is sold and the new residents unearth an old computer while renovating the cellar – information on the computer leads the detectives to the lake district and search teams diving at Wastwater find the bodies of not just the mother and child but of a third person.
Unusually for this series of detective stories neither Tony nor Carol are kidnapped and held to ransom by any of the suspects – but the personal drama of Tony’s mother, Vanessa, and the father he never knew, Arthur unfold. As it happens that Tony has been left a house and a boat in his father’s will – and guess where – Worcester – where Tony is busy profiling. Having never known his father Tony had put the house up for sale without ever having seen it – but now in Worcester his curiosity takes the better of him and he is shown around by the estate agent. The next night he decides to stay at the house as the hotel he has been put in is very mediocre. To his surprise he feels at home in his father’s house - so much so that he oversleeps and is found in bed by the estate agent with people viewing the house – police are called and he is arrested for a short while until the embarrassing matter is quickly cleared up and he gets back to directing the murder investigation.
There are other humorous moments too – one body is found just outside the Bradfield patch – in Yorkshire – DCI Carol Jordan is worried as she fell out with some of the Yorkshire squad – but she dismisses this worry as it happened a long time ago – until a helpful colleague reminds her that this is Yorkshire where they still have not forgotten the Wars of the Roses.
So without giving the end away rest-assured that having cleared up the cold case and the child murders Tony is reinstated as profiler and Carol’s team is allowed to carry on cold case investigations. All ends well for the team – or does it? Tony’s visit to his father’s house has unsettled him and he wants to relocate – to Worcester!
I certainly would recommend this book to crime novel addicts like myself. Oh! And as a final comment Fever of the Bone is a quote from a TS Eliot poem – Whispers of Immortality – Val McDermid likes to use the words of TS Eliot in her titles – it is not a reflection of the novel’s content.
Malcolm F. Martland 30th September 2009.
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