David Harsent

Wel heel spannende detective over een team rechercheurs, met Stella aan het hoofd. Stella heeft een vriend en een minnaar en vindt het erg moeilijk om te kiezen. Er worden jonge vrouwen geheel verminkt, lang gemarteld met een mes gevonden. Het oplossen duurt best lang omdat er weinig aanknopingspunten zijn. De daders zijn een man en een vrouw. De vrouw is door haar moeder regelmatig met een mes bewerkt als kind, zo gaat dat dóór. De man is een afgewezen volger. Uiteindelijk wordt bekend dat hij de dader is en dat bekoopt hij ook met de dood.… (lisätietoja)

It is nearly Christmas but there is precious little to be happy about in and around the grim Harefield Estate in West London. The weather has turned icily cold and everyone seems to be in a hurry. The book opens with the discovery of the body of a young woman in the park. She has been hit a hammer and then garrotted. As if this was not all awful enough, this victim is merely the latest in a run of similar murders across West London, and the police have next to nothing to go on.

The case is being worked by AMIP (the Area Murder Investigation Pool), and the leading officer on the front line is Stella Mooney. She grew up on the Harefield Estate but somehow managed to escape to university and then on into the police force. Stella, like every fictional cop (and probably a lot of real ones) has a whole raft of personal problems of her own, though Lawrence portrays these far more credibly than so many other novelists.

All at once there is a big break in the case. A man contacts the police to confess. This is not unknown - people contact AMIP all the time with fake confessions. This time, however, the confessor, Robert Kimber, seems to know things that suggest he had been at the scene. He in arrested and detained for as long as the law allows without him being charged, but the police are unable to verify his story, and he is eventually released. Shortly thereafter another, similar murder occurs, and Kimber disappears.

Lawrence's particular gift in these novels (this is the third in the series) is the way he captures the horror of the crime-ridden estate. There is a basic acceptance of the most feral approach to life. Everything is on offer on the Harefield Estate. There are brothels, shebeens, gambling dens, stores of illegal arms and, everywhere, people making, selling and taking drugs. He doesn't glamorise any of it - indeed, he goes out of his way to make it sound dreadful.

The plot is very well developed and utterly (even frighteningly) plausible, and Stella Mooney is a marvellous creation
… (lisätietoja)