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Rookie cop Fiona Griffiths, on the cusp of breaking her first big case, uncovers a dire conspiracy that takes her into a dark underworld that threatens her with her own personal demons.Tags
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This was an odd, sometimes compelling, sometimes exasperating mix of police procedural and psychological thriller, and it never quite decides which one it wants to be. The result, for me, is a book that kept pulling me along, then tripping itself up.
The premise is undeniably strong: a “damaged”, hyper-observant detective-in-training, a grim Welsh setting, a dead girl who does not stay neatly dead (at least, not in the way the narrative wants her to), and a mystery with enough hooks to keep the pages turning. When Bingham focuses on the investigation, the novel has that familiar genre satisfaction: clues, reversals, institutional friction - albeit with a slightly skewed angle that separates it from the more straightforward, show more momentum-first crime writing I usually enjoy.
»I tell him that there’s one man dead, and four others, who might or might not be dead by the time help arrives.«
My main problem with this novel is its pacing. Scenes that ought to tighten the screw sometimes drift, and moments that should land as unsettling tip into something that feels faintly absurd. “Weird” can be a strength in crime fiction - think of how certain Nordic noirs let bleakness curdle into the uncanny - but here it often felt like a pacing substitute rather than an intentional mood.
»I’m standing next to them in my long white gown and ridiculous boots, feeling like an extra from some low-budget horror movie, when I notice that my heart is fluttering.«
And then there’s Cotard’s syndrome. Yes, the book tries to justify it, but it is so exceedingly rare that leaning on it this heavily starts to feel like narrative cosplay: a clinical label dragged in to make the protagonist more “special”, rather than more believable. I’m all for damaged detectives, but I want the damage to deepen the story, not periodically derail it.
»Cotard’s syndrome.” Brydon stares at me, somber and without judgment.«
I also struggled with the voice in a way I can’t fully separate from authorship: at times, it felt like a male writer “writing” a female protagonist, rather than a woman speaking on the page. It’s not constant, but when the narration lingers on the arrangement of clothing and hair, or frames a dead body in terms of how it might look “to best advantage”, it pulls me out of Fiona’s head and into the author’s hand.
I’ve also read many reviews that call Fiona “quirky”. She isn’t. “Quirky” is the word you reach for when you want to domesticate discomfort - when a behaviour is odd, but you would rather frame it as charming eccentricity than sit with what the text is insisting upon.
If we take “Talking to the Dead” at face value, Fiona is not doing manic-pixie flourishes, or being whimsically offbeat for colour. She is living with something the book repeatedly positions as a profound, disorienting disruption of selfhood. Her coping mechanisms, affect, and decision-making are not narrative seasoning; they are the point. To call that “quirky” is to shrink an illness into a personality trait.
The core issue is language as ethics: labels decide whether we are taking a character’s suffering seriously, or turning it into a cute tic for our entertainment. A “quirky” protagonist asks you to smile indulgently. Fiona, as written, asks you to reckon with the cost of her condition, and with how everyone around her either accommodates it, exploits it, or quietly looks away.
I probably won’t continue this series, despite Fiona being an interesting character. This opener is a messy mix of procedural bones and (to me, unconvincing) psychological garnish, and that split - between the satisfying mechanics of a crime novel and the insistence on a psychiatric “hook” - is exactly where the book’s identity crisis lives.
Three stars out of five.
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The premise is undeniably strong: a “damaged”, hyper-observant detective-in-training, a grim Welsh setting, a dead girl who does not stay neatly dead (at least, not in the way the narrative wants her to), and a mystery with enough hooks to keep the pages turning. When Bingham focuses on the investigation, the novel has that familiar genre satisfaction: clues, reversals, institutional friction - albeit with a slightly skewed angle that separates it from the more straightforward, show more momentum-first crime writing I usually enjoy.
»I tell him that there’s one man dead, and four others, who might or might not be dead by the time help arrives.«
My main problem with this novel is its pacing. Scenes that ought to tighten the screw sometimes drift, and moments that should land as unsettling tip into something that feels faintly absurd. “Weird” can be a strength in crime fiction - think of how certain Nordic noirs let bleakness curdle into the uncanny - but here it often felt like a pacing substitute rather than an intentional mood.
»I’m standing next to them in my long white gown and ridiculous boots, feeling like an extra from some low-budget horror movie, when I notice that my heart is fluttering.«
And then there’s Cotard’s syndrome. Yes, the book tries to justify it, but it is so exceedingly rare that leaning on it this heavily starts to feel like narrative cosplay: a clinical label dragged in to make the protagonist more “special”, rather than more believable. I’m all for damaged detectives, but I want the damage to deepen the story, not periodically derail it.
»Cotard’s syndrome.” Brydon stares at me, somber and without judgment.«
I also struggled with the voice in a way I can’t fully separate from authorship: at times, it felt like a male writer “writing” a female protagonist, rather than a woman speaking on the page. It’s not constant, but when the narration lingers on the arrangement of clothing and hair, or frames a dead body in terms of how it might look “to best advantage”, it pulls me out of Fiona’s head and into the author’s hand.
I’ve also read many reviews that call Fiona “quirky”. She isn’t. “Quirky” is the word you reach for when you want to domesticate discomfort - when a behaviour is odd, but you would rather frame it as charming eccentricity than sit with what the text is insisting upon.
If we take “Talking to the Dead” at face value, Fiona is not doing manic-pixie flourishes, or being whimsically offbeat for colour. She is living with something the book repeatedly positions as a profound, disorienting disruption of selfhood. Her coping mechanisms, affect, and decision-making are not narrative seasoning; they are the point. To call that “quirky” is to shrink an illness into a personality trait.
The core issue is language as ethics: labels decide whether we are taking a character’s suffering seriously, or turning it into a cute tic for our entertainment. A “quirky” protagonist asks you to smile indulgently. Fiona, as written, asks you to reckon with the cost of her condition, and with how everyone around her either accommodates it, exploits it, or quietly looks away.
I probably won’t continue this series, despite Fiona being an interesting character. This opener is a messy mix of procedural bones and (to me, unconvincing) psychological garnish, and that split - between the satisfying mechanics of a crime novel and the insistence on a psychiatric “hook” - is exactly where the book’s identity crisis lives.
Three stars out of five.
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Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam show less
First Line: Beyond the window, I can see three kites hanging in the air over Bute Park.
The crime scene is a sad one: a woman killed after a short life ruined by drugs and prostitution... and her small six-year-old daughter lying dead beside her. The only thing that marks this crime scene as unusual is one small piece of evidence. Why would a drug addicted prostitute have the debit card of a very wealthy man who's been dead for months?
Police headquarters in Cardiff, Wales, has more important cases to focus on, but there's one person who can't let this one go: young Detective Constable Fiona Griffiths, who's got a reputation for being odd. She can become intensely focused on certain aspects of an investigation, and she doesn't always pick show more up on social cues. And everyone has heard about that two-year gap in her past.... (Psst! She had a breakdown. Mind-- you never heard it from me!)
Even though she has to get called on the carpet by her superior officer and told that she must do as she's told (no ignoring bits of the investigation that bore her, no haring off on some wild idea that she's gotten), Fi Griffiths has all the hallmarks of a brilliant, intuitive investigator. Told to check out the dead man's credit card and nothing more, Fi rapidly heads off on her own investigation because she's positive that dead little six-year-old has something important to tell her.
From the very beginning, Fiona Griffiths grabbed my attention and my sympathy. Throughout most of the book, her mental state is dealt with mostly by hints and innuendo, but the deeper she dives into this investigation, the more obvious it is that something is very wrong with her. From her flashes of insight and her way of putting clues together, to the way she counts the backwards and forwards "if's" in her name, to the way she tries to begin a relationship with a fellow officer, Fiona is an endearing-- and sometimes maddening-- creature.
She tries so hard to come down to Planet Normal-- to know when to laugh and how to smile at the right times-- that I couldn't help but want to get to know her and help her. So many times throughout the book, Fiona's thoughts would sing across the page and make me smile in recognition... or make my heart break. This is one incredibly memorable character, and I have to know more about her.
The fact that she's involved in a complex and dangerous investigation doesn't hurt one bit either. I couldn't put the pieces of it together and had to rely on Fiona's intuition to get us through. On his website the author states that he's working on more books in the series, and that is very welcome news. One thing that I would hope for in the future is that Fiona learns a bit of caution. The way she plows ahead into danger without waiting for backup-- although it fit the situation-- would mean that she would have a short life expectancy in the real world. Since she's a compelling character who's grabbed my interest in both hands, I want her to live for a good, long time. show less
The crime scene is a sad one: a woman killed after a short life ruined by drugs and prostitution... and her small six-year-old daughter lying dead beside her. The only thing that marks this crime scene as unusual is one small piece of evidence. Why would a drug addicted prostitute have the debit card of a very wealthy man who's been dead for months?
Police headquarters in Cardiff, Wales, has more important cases to focus on, but there's one person who can't let this one go: young Detective Constable Fiona Griffiths, who's got a reputation for being odd. She can become intensely focused on certain aspects of an investigation, and she doesn't always pick show more up on social cues. And everyone has heard about that two-year gap in her past.... (Psst! She had a breakdown. Mind-- you never heard it from me!)
Even though she has to get called on the carpet by her superior officer and told that she must do as she's told (no ignoring bits of the investigation that bore her, no haring off on some wild idea that she's gotten), Fi Griffiths has all the hallmarks of a brilliant, intuitive investigator. Told to check out the dead man's credit card and nothing more, Fi rapidly heads off on her own investigation because she's positive that dead little six-year-old has something important to tell her.
From the very beginning, Fiona Griffiths grabbed my attention and my sympathy. Throughout most of the book, her mental state is dealt with mostly by hints and innuendo, but the deeper she dives into this investigation, the more obvious it is that something is very wrong with her. From her flashes of insight and her way of putting clues together, to the way she counts the backwards and forwards "if's" in her name, to the way she tries to begin a relationship with a fellow officer, Fiona is an endearing-- and sometimes maddening-- creature.
She tries so hard to come down to Planet Normal-- to know when to laugh and how to smile at the right times-- that I couldn't help but want to get to know her and help her. So many times throughout the book, Fiona's thoughts would sing across the page and make me smile in recognition... or make my heart break. This is one incredibly memorable character, and I have to know more about her.
The fact that she's involved in a complex and dangerous investigation doesn't hurt one bit either. I couldn't put the pieces of it together and had to rely on Fiona's intuition to get us through. On his website the author states that he's working on more books in the series, and that is very welcome news. One thing that I would hope for in the future is that Fiona learns a bit of caution. The way she plows ahead into danger without waiting for backup-- although it fit the situation-- would mean that she would have a short life expectancy in the real world. Since she's a compelling character who's grabbed my interest in both hands, I want her to live for a good, long time. show less
I have to give a thank-you shoutout to my friend Mary, who put me on the trail of this series featuring Wales D.C. Fiona Griffiths, who is a crackerjack detective with a penchant for not following orders from her superior officers. There was lots of potential for her personality quirks to make her unlikable but the author avoided the potholes and instead created a fascinating woman who was easy to root for. The book is narrated by Griffith, and she has a strong and distinctive voice. The plotting was also well done, with several seemingly disconnected threads coming together in the end. I really enjoyed this debut and look forward to continuing the series.
When I start a new series about a British police detective, I hope to find that it has something about it that will keep my interest and set it apart from all the other series out there competing for my attention. 'Talking To The Dead'delighted me by delivering something well-written, engaging and original.
From the start, I was impressed with Harry Bingham's prose. Without ever dropping into the kind of purple prose passaged that are the fiction writer's equivalent of the self-indulgent always-too-long guitar solos that used to plague Rock bands once upon a time, he writes in a way that does more than carry the story forward. The main character, Detective Constable Fiona Griffiths is odd. Everyone knows that, including Fiona herself. show more Harry Bingham conveys this oddness in the way in which he describes the world as seen through Fiona's eyes. In crime fiction in particular, the quality of the writing makes the difference between mundane and marvellous. This internal monologue from Fiona, describing her reaction to hospitals, is an example of the marvellous.
'I’m not good with hospitals, the endless buildings, trees dotted around like apologies and inside, it’s job functions you can’t understand and that air of incomprehensible busyness. Curtained off beds and death settling like falling snow.'"
It shows me that Fiona is bright and educated and that she's a little off. It also makes me wonder about her own experience of hospitals. The imagery goes beyond utilitarian without being self-consciously lyrical. There's a lot of this kind of writing in the book.
What every police series needs is a detective who is something more than a voice-over rehearsing the plot, misdirecting the reader's attention, and shouting 'Eureka' at the appropriate moment. The detective needs to have a personality, to feel real, and not to be bland.
Fiona Griffiths, the newly-minted Detective Constable working the South Wales Police, is a fascinating character. Harry Bingham took me right inside her head. Being there didn't always help me to understand her but it did allow me to experience her. That was enough to whet my curiosity that I was more interested in her than the crimes she was trying to solve. What I enjoyed was that the problems that Fiona Griffiths has aren't related to the abuse of drink or drugs or emotional scars from failed relationships or guilt over past sins but to who she is and how she thinks. Fiona is very bright. She's also odd to the point of being at risk of lapsing into debilitating mental illness. We know from early in the book that she was ill for a couple of years as a teenager. We also know she 'got better' and went on to academic success at University. It takes most of the book to find out what the illness was and the limited extent to which it's true that she 'got better'.
Of course, good writing and a strong main character aren't enough. There have to be other people that I can believe in and a crime that is complex but credible. Harry Bingham surrounds Fiona with people who are almost as odd as she is. Her father, who has made a career on the edges of legality. An ex-policeman who is what Fiona might become. A martial arts trainer with an unorthodox past and opaque motivations. He also gives her a boss who is the perfect blend of chiding and supporting.
The crime turned out to be grittier than I expected. I liked watching Fiona pull the disparate pieces into a pattern that made sense. The pattern involves violence against sex workers. I liked that the descriptions of these women were neither judgemental nor sentimental.
Talking To The Dead' is the first book in a series that is currently six books strong. I have no idea where the series is going to go after the end of the first book but I'm looking forward to finding out.
I recommend the audiobook, narrated by Siriol Jenkins . Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample. show less
Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham is the first book in his series featuring Detective Fiona Griffiths. This first case is an emotional one for Fiona, a mother and her young daughter murdered and left lying in the filth of a squalid low-rent drug house. The mother was known to have worked as a prostitute, but why anyone would have murdered her six year old is a mystery. Fiona feels a connection with the dead and she is sure that the little six year old is trying to tell her something.
As heinous as this case proved to be, my real interest lay with the main character. Fiona is a complex multi-layered individual. She doesn’t work well with rules, and has the reputation of being a maverick. The story is told from Fiona’s perspective show more and her unique voice lifts this book to a much higher level. There is a mystery about Fiona and why she is so different. She had an emotional breakdown in her late teens that cost her a couple of years of her life. She was able to overcome this, graduate from Cambridge University and find a position with the Cardiff police and works at appearing to be a citizen of “Planet Normal” but underneath we can see how vulnerable she is.
I found Talking to the Dead to be both a great story and an introduction to a fascinating new character. The author excels in slowly revealing the layers of both the mystery and his main character, and I look forward to reading more about the damaged, slightly weird yet very sympathetic Fiona Griffiths. show less
As heinous as this case proved to be, my real interest lay with the main character. Fiona is a complex multi-layered individual. She doesn’t work well with rules, and has the reputation of being a maverick. The story is told from Fiona’s perspective show more and her unique voice lifts this book to a much higher level. There is a mystery about Fiona and why she is so different. She had an emotional breakdown in her late teens that cost her a couple of years of her life. She was able to overcome this, graduate from Cambridge University and find a position with the Cardiff police and works at appearing to be a citizen of “Planet Normal” but underneath we can see how vulnerable she is.
I found Talking to the Dead to be both a great story and an introduction to a fascinating new character. The author excels in slowly revealing the layers of both the mystery and his main character, and I look forward to reading more about the damaged, slightly weird yet very sympathetic Fiona Griffiths. show less
Rather late coming to this series, but I won't let that stop me.
I like Fiona Griffiths, an irreverent, cheeky DC in Cardiff, who is also a little bit mutinous, with a more-than-healthy-helping of self-doubt. She fades in and out of Planet Normal, as Bingham describes it, wrestling with a haunted past that had her institutionalized in a mental healthcare facility for two years when she was a a teen. At the same time, she is also fearless, in contradiction to her insecurities, allowing her to achieve much, and get justice for the victims, in spectacular fashion. This all rather sounds like "girl super hero" but there is nothing cartoonish about this novel at all. Well written and fast paced, it is an excellent police procedural which show more leads you quickly and deftly through the crime, with no gaps, no dropped threads and a satisfying conclusion, all things which a good detective novel should be.
===========
It's funny how seemingly-throw-away lines from an innocuous little detective novel can worm its way into the unconscious. Here I am, two days later, and I woke up at 3 a.m. thinking about a scene that occurs quite early in the novel:
"I used to draw a lot as a kid. I probably did flowers like you."
No comment again six times over, which makes for a lot of silence in one small living room.
I don't know if I did draw a lot as a child. Because of the illness in my teens, my childhood seems like something viewed over the other side of a hill. Little snippets come back to me, but I don't know where they've come from of if they're true. I've got a story about my past more than actual functional memories of it, but for all I know, everyone is in the same position. Maybe childhoods are things we live through once, then reconstruct in fantasy. Maybe no one has the childhood they think they've had.
It must have come to mind because I fell asleep reading Proust, he also worming his way into my subconscious, in the hazy droning of things past, ... or things lost?
I was also affected deeply by yet-another-seemingly-innocent scene:
At the victims' funeral, Fi reflects on their lives:
Janet and Stacey both ended up in care because their parents were crazy, sick, violent or useless. In effect, they never knew their parents. The state took over. ... That's part of what hooks me about The Janet and April Show. Janet had a crap life and she fought to give her kid a better one. She failed and yet it's not her failure that captures me but the depth of her trying.
What matters is the depth of her trying. show less
I like Fiona Griffiths, an irreverent, cheeky DC in Cardiff, who is also a little bit mutinous, with a more-than-healthy-helping of self-doubt. She fades in and out of Planet Normal, as Bingham describes it, wrestling with a haunted past that had her institutionalized in a mental healthcare facility for two years when she was a a teen. At the same time, she is also fearless, in contradiction to her insecurities, allowing her to achieve much, and get justice for the victims, in spectacular fashion. This all rather sounds like "girl super hero" but there is nothing cartoonish about this novel at all. Well written and fast paced, it is an excellent police procedural which show more leads you quickly and deftly through the crime, with no gaps, no dropped threads and a satisfying conclusion, all things which a good detective novel should be.
===========
It's funny how seemingly-throw-away lines from an innocuous little detective novel can worm its way into the unconscious. Here I am, two days later, and I woke up at 3 a.m. thinking about a scene that occurs quite early in the novel:
"I used to draw a lot as a kid. I probably did flowers like you."
No comment again six times over, which makes for a lot of silence in one small living room.
I don't know if I did draw a lot as a child. Because of the illness in my teens, my childhood seems like something viewed over the other side of a hill. Little snippets come back to me, but I don't know where they've come from of if they're true. I've got a story about my past more than actual functional memories of it, but for all I know, everyone is in the same position. Maybe childhoods are things we live through once, then reconstruct in fantasy. Maybe no one has the childhood they think they've had.
It must have come to mind because I fell asleep reading Proust, he also worming his way into my subconscious, in the hazy droning of things past, ... or things lost?
I was also affected deeply by yet-another-seemingly-innocent scene:
At the victims' funeral, Fi reflects on their lives:
Janet and Stacey both ended up in care because their parents were crazy, sick, violent or useless. In effect, they never knew their parents. The state took over. ... That's part of what hooks me about The Janet and April Show. Janet had a crap life and she fought to give her kid a better one. She failed and yet it's not her failure that captures me but the depth of her trying.
What matters is the depth of her trying. show less
I have now read the first six books of this series. There is not a single boring page in a Harry Bingham novel. The protagonist is mesmerizing and simply a lot of fun to read through. These books straddle the line between the utterly implausible but extremely satisfying Sherlock Holmesian approach, and the more dry realism of other crime fiction. I appreciate the ways in which Bingham weaves in social issues related to class, power, surveillance, and policy. Oddly enough, the first Fiona Griffiths novel was my least favorite. I don't think I had quite bought into her or recognized the sheer possibilities of such a character until the second book. Perhaps I will have a different experience upon re-reading it. At any rate, this is the show more best crime series hands down I have read--and I read a lot--in years. I would be more effusive, but I like to temper my comments about a book or series until I have had a good deal of time to fully digest and compare. show less
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Author Information
24 Works 1,627 Members
Harry Bingham has authored five novels for HarperCollins and two non-fiction titles with 4th Estate. His work has been short-and long-Listed for major literary awards and has appeared on bestseller lists. He is also the MD of the Writers' Workshop, the UK's leading editorial consultancy.
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Talking to the Dead
- Original title
- Talking to the Dead
- Original publication date
- 2012; 2012-09-25
- People/Characters
- Fiona Griffiths (Detective Constable)
- Dedication*
- Voor N., als altijd
- First words*
- Sollicitatiegesprek oktober 2006 -
Door het raam zie ik drie vliegers boven Bute Park hangen. - Quotations*
- ‘Dans eerst. Denk later. Het is de natuurlijke volgorde.’
Samuel Beckett - Last words*
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Volwaardig bewoner van de planeet Normaal.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Toch zullen de grote lijnen van Fiona’s beschrijving van haar toestand mensen dier ermee bekend zijn over het geheel genomen vertrouwd in de oren klinken. - Original language*
- Engels
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 823.92
- Canonical LCC
- PR6102.I54
- Disambiguation notice*
- Citaat uit William Shakespeares “Hamlet” ontleend aan de vertaling van Willy Courteaux, in: Verzameld Werk / Tragedies (2007), Meulenhoff / Manteau, Amsterdam / Antwerpen.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- Popularity
- 55,200
- Reviews
- 48
- Rating
- (3.79)
- Languages
- 6 — Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 28
- ASINs
- 11
