What Book to Read?

It’s what separates the men from the boys in this job. You can have a perfectly good career in the force without giving a damn about why who did what to whom. But if you want to learn about the world, if you want to know about people and what makes them what they are, you have to see beyond that, you have to dig deeper. You have to know.

If you are in the mood to find out, you can’t go past the police procedurals of any one of Peter Robinson, John Harvey or Reginald Hill. With all of them you can look forward to very competent writing and a good plot.

Peter Robinson’s policeman is DCI Allen Banks. He made the above comment, and exercises his curiosity out of the (imaginary) town of Eastvalein Yorkshire. I recently read All the Colours of Darkness (2008), which is the eighteenth book in the series. What appears to be a straight forward murder-suicide turns out to be far more complicated, as the police try to follow up the web of connections the dead couple leave behind, and to sort out what might have motivated their actions. As in most good police procedurals, Banks has a life outside the force, which his work often disrupts, though it is occasionally useful to his investigation; Robinson does a good job of weaving the different parts of Banks’s life together. Banks’s perspective is not the only one; other officers in his team have distinctive personalities and contributions, though not drawn in the same detail as is Banks. In terms of the plot, one of the main threads of the investigation comes to light by rather too much coincidence for my liking, but I have to admit that there is probably not a crime story written that doesn’t rely to some degree on happenstance.

John Harvey’s DI Charlie Resnick stories, set in Nottingham, are a bit grimmer and grittier than Robinson’s. I read Cold in Hand (2008), which is the eleventh in the series. Charlie is now living with his former sergeant, DI Lynn Kellog, and she is the lead character for much of action in part 1 of the story. In part 2, the lead is taken by DCI Karen Shields, an interesting new character (tall, black, female and senior), though it is Resnick who finally connects the dots.Nottingham is portrayed as a run-down and rather depressing city, boasting a wide range of criminal activity, including gang warfare, gun running and prostitution, to say nothing of murder. The police are investigating a number of crimes, and the challenge of the plot is to establish which are connected. Resnick still likes his jazz; the book takes its title from a Bessie Smith song.

Reginald Hill’s policemen are Chief Superintendent Andy Dalziel and DCI Peter Pascoe. I read A Cure for All Diseases (2008), which is the twenty-third in the series. If you are by any chance new to Dalziel and Pascoe, I should warn you that this isn’t a really typical example, because here Hill is having a bit of fun with Jane Austen. Shortly before she died, Austen wrote eleven chapters of a new novel, Sanditon; it was to be a satire on health spas. Hill sets his story in Sandytown, which is similarly devoted to becoming a mecca for seekers of health and well being; a number characters share names and characteristics in common with the original. Only Hill suggests that the ‘three or four Families in a Country village’ formula is an equally good one for crime. Some of the action is conveyed in emails, which I found a bit artificial, and recordings of Daziel’s thoughts, which gave his crass approach to the world rather too much of an airing. But these reservations aside, it is quite a clever story. And come to think of it, it’s a wonder no one ever did take to Lady Catherine de Bourgh or Mrs Norris with a blunt instrument.

With so many books to their credit, you do wonder how these writers manage to come up each time with a fresh angle on murder and its investigation. The appeal is partly maintained through interest in their main characters, partly through the pace of the stories and partly through the subtlety they bring to the balance of luck, insight and plain old detection by which the investigations are resolved. These are masters of the genre writing at the top of their powers.

You can find out more about Peter Robinson here, about John Harvey here, and Reginald Hill here.