Dark Rooms by Lynda LaPlante is the eighth in the series featuring ‘young’ Jane Tennison, although we’ve slowing been working our way from naïve constable to the kinda scary Detective Chief Inspector readers (and viewers) meet in Prime Suspect.
In fact here – even though she’s been prickly and standoffish in the past – I felt she’s more authoritarian. Still kind hearted, but perhaps more judgmental perhaps and contrary.
As a non-parent I got tired of books about parenting – warring parents and those judging others so have been trying to steer clear of them. The Curfew by TM Logan includes an element of that… relationships between parents and their kids and with other parents, but it’s more about parents trying to get to the bottom of a mystery involving their son… and forced to ponder the extent of that involvement.
So this appealed to mystery-loving me. Someone goes missing. It’s not who we initially think. Or even who we next think. And even then there’s a weird silence around the missing person. Teenaged friends with them at the time are strangely silent when it’s obvious they should be doing everything they can to help them be found. Unless of course they have some other ulterior motive. But how on earth do you get a group of teenagers to keep a secret without one of them caving…. ?
Unholy Murder is the seventh in the (young) Jane Tennison series. It wasn’t until I started writing this review that I reflected on how Jane’s changed over the course of the books (ie. her career to date). I’m actually quite sure how LaPlante is pacing these but we’re in the 1980s now and obviously getting closer to the original Prime Suspect books and series time-wise.
This series is also a bit of a study in culture and society as – unlike the earliest books – Jane seems to be readily accepted as a police officer now. Definitely respected by her contemporaries and not viewed as an anomaly by the public.
I adore Lynda LaPlante’s Prime Suspect series, along with her ‘young’ Jane Tennison prequels (set in the 1970s) so was excited to see her new release Buried – kicking off a brand new series.
Here we’re introduced to Detective Jack Warr. He’s a bit of an unlikely lead character: he’s not really ambitious and somewhat ambivalent about his career in the Met’s Serious Crimes Squad though many would probably envy the opportunity.
His team is presented with a case however, that intrigues him a little. Even more so when it seems to have personal links to his own family history.
It wasn’t until after I read this book (that) it occurred to me we can’t be that far from the Jane Tennison we eventually meet in the Prime Suspect series. Though I guess a decade is a lifetime in Jane’s world.
In the last book in this series Murder Mile, I commented that there seemed to be less sexist crap (misogynist bullshit I think I said) than in previous novels, but sadly her entry into the all-male Flying Squad, sees Jane yet again struggling with prejudice despite ‘integration’ seven years earlier.
I’ve now read all three books in this series by CJ Carver and think this latest is probably my favourite. The first, Spare Me The Truth was very much scene-setting – in which we meet former former spy Dan Forrester who doesn’t seem to remember his old life. We soon learn why and, though his memory’s not entirely returned, we get more of a sense of his past and who he is now in the second book of the series, Tell Me A Lie.
And I think Carver’s now cementing that in this third book, also featuring Detective Constable Lucy Davies.
I picked up this book after a few non-reading days. I was at my mother’s so not in the bathtub at my own place where the reading magic usually happens. There was nothing on TV and I was procrastinating. After an hour or so on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (in a rotation every 5 minutes) I finally picked up Spare Me The Truth by CJ Carver, which asks…
What if someone told you your life was a lie?
And I was pulled in. Big time. And had to keep reading until I’d finished.
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