Krishna
I have read many mystery British authors but this is my first Reginald Hill book.
Confusing beginning, and the first impressions were that this is going to be ‘Oh, not another run of the mill mystery author, please!’ kind of a book.
There is this cave where two people meet to exchange arms for drugs but try to kill each other after executing all their subordinates.
Then Sibyl nee Morgan, crippled and with a ‘taint in her blood’ brooding over computer profiles of many people.
And a policeman Pascoe who reaches the scene of an accident (truck vs taxi) where a beautiful woman implores him to take her to the airport in order not to miss a flight but both the specific airport and the amount of luggage she is carrying arouse his suspicions.
Ellie is writing a – rather interesting – story when two people come to her door claiming that her daughter, who was on a school trip, was sick and asking her to accompany them. She beats them hard and they run. She explains how she knew that they were fake to the Inspector who arrives. She seems to have been an ex spy.
When her friend Daphne notices a stranger lurking near Ellie’s house and foolishly tries to question him, she is left on the street with a broken nose and her car stolen as a result.
When Peter goes to inspect a suspect, he finds him in the bathtub, dying, with his wrists slashed.
Daphne and Ellie go with the female cop to Nosebleed, a cottage up at the mountains with the child to be anonymous and safe from attacks for a while.
Meanwhile, we learn that Dalziel deliberately messes up his prosecution of the female attacker with a view to letting her escape and watching where she goes, and the MI5 is so upset by this that they warn him to desist messing with the case.
We learn that the mad looking lady harbours Kelly (the female attacker) due to some past associations with her and her gang. When Pascoe realizes that his wife is in the hands of the wrong people, it is late. Novello gets shot.
Then comes a complicated drug lord story and how the secret service wanted to trap her and inadvertently ran into Ellie. All because Ellie as charity work chose to correspond to one of the lynchpins of the gang who was in jail. Yawn is your response to this ‘twist’.
There are tense moments where a group of gunmen take Feenie and others to the tottering place, precisely where we know Kelly Cornelius has been hidden. The dogs and the child of Ellie watch from a hidden tangle of bushes.
She gets reunited with dad and they all come to the remote place where Ellie, Daphne, Kelly and Feenie are all held hostage by the goons but stay out of site. They learn that Kelly is really Feenie’s child.
One of the goons tries to kill an Irishman known to Kelly on the orders of another and in turn is killed by an accomplice. They vanish and then Dalziel and Pascoe decide to go on a rescue against the wishes of Sempernel who then joins in reluctantly. They go in a truck that was expected. In the meanwhile Kelly is in danger of being sexually assaulted by the deranged head of the thugs (Big Ajax) and Ellie tries to stop him and gets a broken nose for her pains. We
In the meanwhile as Big Ajax has disappeared with Kelly into another room, Little Ajax is tackled by both Feenie and the diminutive Wendy Woolley. They get ready to face Big Ajax when he comes back, after Feenie effortlessly kills Little Ajax with her bare hands.
They stage a scene to distract Big Ajax when he comes back – rape, attack, etc. The fun part is there, the literary references, the erudite conversations and reminiscences in the middle of a thriller all make for a fun reading experience but you have to let it grow on you before you appreciate it. Especially the contract between the crudeness of language of Andy Delziel against the manifold literary allusions from the mind of Ellie Pascoe.
Even the parallel story of Odysseys and Aeneas also has a nice twist at the end. Even though Odysseus speaks like a Brit (“Summat like that” he says for example) it is still gripping and nice.
Literary allusions, twists, turns and a satisfactory ending – contrary to what I thought, this is a pretty good book but you have to let it grow on you.
7/10
– – Krishna (Apr 2018)