What Book to Read?

I think with this one, I fell into the series trap – breaking into a long running group of characters with shared adventures from previous books, and knowing nothing of the back story. Inhuman Remains (2009) is the most recent in the series Blackstone crime stories. I gather that Oz Blackstone and Primavera Phillips met in an earlier book, solved some crimes together and were married long enough to have a child before they divorced and he married again. Somehow in all of this Oz got the part of a detective in a film and became a star, though this didn’t stop him doing some detecting on the side. This book, however, features his ex-wife Prim, and is apparently the beginning of new series.

The book starts with Prim and her son living in a Spanish village, where she fled after what she believes was an attempt by her ex-husband Oz to kill her in a plane crash. The back story of her survival is told, though it has no bearing at all on this story. Oz is summarily removed from the scene with a fatal heart attack. This seems a fairly drastic way of dealing with the hero of a number of previous books, but I have no way of knowing (without reading the previous nine) whether or not this was a fitting end for him. There are also quite a lot of references to other family members who are no doubt familiar to series readers, but seem to have little relevance here.

In this story, Prim’s aunt comes to visit and asks her to look for her son, Frank, who has disappeared somewhere inSpain. Frank has a dodgy past, and could well be in trouble. Prim agrees, and leaving her aunt to look after her son Tom, she sets out to investigate the company Frank had been working for, particularly its large scale financial dealings. She finds her cousin, but then her aunt is kidnapped, and she and Frank set out to rescue her. Fortunately she has friends in the local police, and contacts back inLondonfrom the old detecting days to help her. There are some twists I didn’t see coming, though perhaps I should have.

The story is told by Prim after most of it has happened. This allows for comments like ‘Was I nervous? Too damn right I was’, and partly explains her somewhat dismissive attitude to the danger she is in. Underplaying the danger, however, detracts from the urgency and tension of the story. The hunt/chase formula the plot is built around needs a series of crises, but the story doesn’t really deliver them. The twists come at the end, and though one of them is quite clever (the other main one being less realistic), this isn’t enough to rescue the rest of the rather pedestrian account. I wondered if some of the chatty friends-and-family digressions in the book are part of a world created throughout the series, and as enjoyable to series readers as the particular story.

Maybe breaking into a series is always problematic. Do you start at the beginning or the end? There are some series where the books are not merely stand-alone; they develop, at least in terms of the characters and their situation, as the series progresses. The best example I can think of is Ruth Rendell’s Wexford series, where the main characters in the early books are rather thin but in the later ones are complex and satisfying. But this is an argument for starting in the middle, not at the beginning. Alternatively I think it is better to start Sue Grafton’s alphabet series with A is for Alibi, rather than jumping in at P or Q.  On the other hand, I thought Patricia Cornwall’s Kay Scarpetta series started well but ran out of steam. For all I know, the earlier books in this series may be better, but I’m probably not going to find out. Can anyone else tell me?

Quintin Jardine also writes a series about Bob Skinner, a seniorEdinburghpoliceman. You can find out more about Jardine and his books here.