A Dreadful Past

January 4, 2016
British author Turnbull’s engrossing fifth police procedural featuring Det. Chief Insp. Harry Vicary (after 2014’s Denial of Murder) opens quietly enough when Andrew “Big Andy” Cragg, a minor gang member—really a gofer or errand boy—drops into a London pub. Over a pint, Cragg drunkenly confides to a stranger that he once helped dispose of a murder victim in a neighborhood south of the Thames. The stranger turns out to be an undercover Scotland Yard detective, who seizes Cragg’s beer glass as evidence as soon as he walks out of the pub. A young woman’s body is indeed found in the spot Cragg designated, sending Vicary and his team to their missing person files. One thing slowly leads to another, and eventually the squad painstakingly analyzes 10-year-old clues. Turnbull unobtrusively slips details of the officers’ private lives into the action. A lot of people do a daunting amount of work on the way to the satisfying conclusion.

October 1, 2016
British coppers Hennessey and Yellich return in another challenging case, this one dealing with a long-ago murder, a broken vase, a gang of brutal killers, and a psychological transformation. When Noel Middleton spots a Wedgwood vase in the window of a local antiques shop, he is sure the vase is one that belonged to his family, who were brutally murdered 20 years earlier in what appeared to be a robbery gone horribly wrong. The vase was one of the items taken by the killers, so how did it end up in an antiques shop? Once he's confirmed via the initials on the bottom of the vase that it is his family's, Middleton goes straight to the police to ask them to reopen the case. Cold cases are not the norm for Hennessey and Yellich, but they take this one on, despite knowing it may be impossible to solve after all this time. But as they ferret out clues, follow up on tenuous leads, and explore means, motives, and opportunities, they find themselves gripped by one of the most violent, terrifying, chilling cases of their careers. As usual, Turnbull writes in his idiosyncratic, rather old-fashioned style, but it is this unique stylealong with the inventive plots, complex characters, and thorough descriptions of police workthat makes his books appealing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

August 8, 2016
Things are slow for Det. Chief Insp. George Hennessy and Det. Sgt. Somerled Yellich in British author Turnbull’s meticulous 24th mystery featuring the Vale of York police (after 2013’s Gift Wrapped). Hennessy and his team have time to look at a case that’s not only cold but practically frostbitten: a 20-year-old murder of a couple and their 17-year-old daughter in an isolated house. Now the son, the sole survivor of the massacre, tells the police that he has found a damaged vase in an antique shop that was stolen from his family the night of the murders. Hennessy and company start to trace the vase and reinterview the victims’ neighbors for details they might not have told the police before. Team members share each small clue, try to fit it into place, and then follow the trail it suggests. Turnbull painstakingly lays out the facts of the case, to a degree that may be too much for some readers. Still, series fans will enjoy catching up on the officers’ personal lives.

A cold case suddenly heats up for DCI George Hennessey (Gift Wrapped, 2013, etc.) and his colleagues.The murders of Noel Middleton's parents and his sister, Sara, a 19-year-old whom a traffic accident had left blind several years earlier, have long sat in the York CID's files of unsolved cases. The police have determined that the crime was perpetrated by "more than two but no more than six" individuals assumed to have entered the home to steal the jewelry that was found missing. Noel, who survived because he was away at university, has accepted the CID's inability to find the assailants until he looks into the window of a local antiquary and sees a vase that disappeared the night of the murder. Hoping that the police can trace whomever sold the vase to the dealer back to the criminals responsible for the deaths of his family, Middleton persuades Hennessey to reopen the case. But when Carmen Pharoah, Reg Webster, Thompson Ventnor, and Somerled Yellich investigate, what they find shocks even the seasoned DCI. The Middletons seem to have been killed not by professionals after loot but thrill-seeking psychopaths who, according to forensic psychologist Kamy Joseph, eventually "matured" out of their habit of homicide. How many victims did they claim before this maturation took hold? It takes Hennessey's team not only persistence, but considerable ingenuity to solve a string of apparently motiveless crimes committed in the distant past. A quirky change from the usual sifting through the suspects most likely to have wanted the victim dead, with only the ritual recounting of each detective's domestic arrangements to remind readers of the customary Turnbull formula. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2016
A cold case suddenly heats up for DCI George Hennessey (Gift Wrapped, 2013, etc.) and his colleagues.The murders of Noel Middletons parents and his sister, Sara, a 19-year-old whom a traffic accident had left blind several years earlier, have long sat in the York CIDs files of unsolved cases. The police have determined that the crime was perpetrated by more than two but no more than six individuals assumed to have entered the home to steal the jewelry that was found missing. Noel, who survived because he was away at university, has accepted the CIDs inability to find the assailants until he looks into the window of a local antiquary and sees a vase that disappeared the night of the murder. Hoping that the police can trace whomever sold the vase to the dealer back to the criminals responsible for the deaths of his family, Middleton persuades Hennessey to reopen the case. But when Carmen Pharoah, Reg Webster, Thompson Ventnor, and Somerled Yellich investigate, what they find shocks even the seasoned DCI. The Middletons seem to have been killed not by professionals after loot but thrill-seeking psychopaths who, according to forensic psychologist Kamy Joseph, eventually matured out of their habit of homicide. How many victims did they claim before this maturation took hold? It takes Hennesseys team not only persistence, but considerable ingenuity to solve a string of apparently motiveless crimes committed in the distant past. A quirky change from the usual sifting through the suspects most likely to have wanted the victim dead, with only the ritual recounting of each detectives domestic arrangements to remind readers of the customary Turnbull formula.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.