No Birds Sing

No Birds Sing is #4 in Jo Bannister's Castlemere series. The series began with A Bleeding of Innocents, where we met the main characters Frank Shapiro, Liz Graham and Cal Donovan, all of the Castlemere police.

Although Castlemere is a small town, it seems to get its share of crime. This time around it's train robbing, dog fights, ram raiding (in which the criminals plow their car into a store window, grab the loot and scurry off), and sadly, a series of rapes directed at 40-ish, professional women. The team certainly has its hands full, trying to stave off this wave of crime, but for two of the team things spin out of control, making their jobs even more difficult.

The opening sequence of the train robbery in this book is very well done, show more but the rest of the book is just so-so, definitely not one of my favorites by this author. Nor is it one of my favorites in the world of British police procedurals. What is has going for it is the author's positive views on the post-rape experience,but the rest is pretty much formulaic and predictable, with not a lot of oomph mystery-wise or plot wise.

I would recommend the book to people who have started the series and are intent on seeing it through to the end, but probably not to anyone else. There are much better police procedurals out there that are more worth the reading time. show less

For quite some time I thought this book was set in the 1950s or so, only to stumble across a (rare) mobile phone. The plot centers around rape and other victimization and how the characters deal with it - and how others should interact with the victim. While I liked the characters, I found the lengthy explanations of what it all means rather tedious. And while I liked the way reader expectations were set up, the story itself did not fulfill these expectations for me.

My favorite of the Castlemere series tracks two series of crimes; one a serial rapist and the other a violent gang of ram-raiders who are also involved with dog fighting. DI Liz Graham follows one trail, while DS Cal Donovan follows the other. What happens to both characters lends depth not only to a police story, but adds layers of development to these characters.

Fans of Bannister's character Detective Inspector Liz Graham will enjoy this gritty police procedural. The story takes place in Castlemere, a small English community of about 80,000 people. While normally not a crime ridden city, the police find them selves dealing with 3 serious crimes, apparently unrelated. Liz Graham will find this one of the toughest battles she has ever fought and will test her personally more than any other crime.