Ash and Bone

This is the first book I've read by John Harvey, the famous British crime novelist. It won't be the last. The man certainly knows how to tell a story and keep you awake while he does it.

I'm delighted to find that he writes about characters who could have inhabited the TV series "The Bill" in its early days, with old fashioned police work and solid, hard working policemen and women.

Frank Elder is a retired Detective Inspector, living a lonely, solitary life in Cornwall. His wife has divorced him and remarried, and his teenaged daughter is still bitterly resentful that, through his work connections, she was abducted and raped. When forty-something Detective Sergeant Maddy Birch is raped and murdered. Frank is drawn back to the force as a show more consultant. This story follows his investigation, his difficult family life, as well as the lives of various secondary characters who are affected by the crime he's investigating.

The author draws a very skilful plot with two believable suspects vying for the role of Maddy’s murderer at the same time, and more than a hint of some very nasty police corruption.

Harvey has delivered a page turning plot, sensitively written relationships and a true sense of haunting fear and terror throughout. A truly intelligent crime novel! show less

Typical John Harvey...........................solid characters, tight prose, interesting storyline. Ash & Bone is perhaps a little fanciful in both the range of its plot and Elder's dalliance with Karen, but hey, this is fiction. Perhaps this made it a 3.5 rather than the usual 4 for Harvey for me.

This is the second in Harvey's Frank Elder series, and as good as the best of his Resnick books. Frank Elder is an ex-detective, who took early retirement and reluctantly returns to the force as a consultant. A multi-threaded crime story, with police corruption, a murdered policewoman, and a personal family drama, three themes that weave in and out of each other and sometimes seem to be connected, sometimes not.

I think John Harvey produces the most rounded characters in British crime fiction, and his settings are entirely believable, even when his plots turn out cliched.

This book does everything that one could wish for a good crime novel to do.

The story is a tangled web of cases, some directly being reviewed by ex-DI Frank Elder, and others butting in to his investigation.
I particularly like the way in which Harvey introduces his other famous detective, Charlie Resnick, in a cameo role. This gives an indescribable breath of reality to both men.

The story paces along at a fair lick, and Harvey knows just the right amount of his detective's private life to introduce. A crime story poet: not a word wasted.

I liked this one better than the first Frank Elder book. There was less about his daughter this time which I found to be a bit of a distraction/digresson in the first one rather than an interesting aspect of Elder's life. The theme here is similar, a mid 50's detective retired to distant Cornwall who gets asked to help out with a current investigation that hasn't been solved by the police. Enjoyed the plot and characters, good pace, really nothing to fault it except the bits about his daughter again. Don't see how that adds anything to the plot or to our ability to like the character of Elder. Will definitely read the third one in this series. Haven't read any of his longer, earlier series featuring the detective Charlie Resnick but he show more is a good writer so I will definitely try a few of them too. show less

Another Frank Elder story, brought back from retirement once again, this time on a barely cold case in London, whilst trying to sort out his daughter's messed up life in Nottingham. Interestingly, whilst in Nottingham Elder crosses paths with another well-known John Harvey character, Resnick, from a different set of novels!

Well-written, authentic sounding police approach behind the scenes of major crime investigations, including corruption.

Dieses Hörbuch ist wohl ein Beispiel dafür, wie ein wahrscheinlich sehr interessanter und spannender Krimi (wenn man den Rezensionen im Internet glauben kann) durch Kürzungen uninteressant und langweilig wird. Da hätte ich wahrscheinlich lieber das Buch lesen sollen.