No Birds Sing
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
LIVE BAIT
The canal town of Castlemere is the kind of hard-luck place that provides constant challenge to its crack team of detectives. But the skills of Superintendent Frank Shapiro, Inspector Liz Graham and the volatile Sergeant Cal Donovan are put to the test in very personal ways.
A string of violent crime—train robberies, a dog-fighting ring and a rapist stalking the area—forces both Graham and Donovan to go undercover. The rapist is attacking blond, fortyish, successful women. Liz fits the profile and acts as a decoy, unprepared for the shattering repercussions in the department, her marriage and herself. As Donovan joins the vicious ranks of the pit bull circles, both cases take shocking and deadly turns....
"Bannister depicts her force coping with several major crimes at once. She does so brilliantly."—Publishers Weekly
"This is more than genre fiction, it's art."—Mystery News
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Castlemere, an English city of about 80,000, isn't usually a hotbed of crime. But in a 48-hour stretch, its coppers have to deal with ram-raiders (a British version of smash-and-grab robbers); a serial rapist; a dog-fighting ring; and a train robbery. In the fourth Castlemere procedural (following A Taste for Burning), Bannister's appealing police trio exhibit their diverse strengths and weaknesses: Detective Superintendent Frank Shapiro is a 30-year veteran with experience and instincts enough to know when to give his staff free rein; Detective Inspector Liz Graham is bright and ambitious and quite likely to be promoted off the Castlemere force; and Detective Sergeant Cal Donovan is the maverick who's too unorthodox to climb the ranks but too valuable to be dismissed. Many procedurals read as if the police had the luxury of tackling each case as a separate entity, but Bannister depicts her force coping with several major crimes at once. She does so brilliantly. While Shapiro coordinates and oversees operations to trap the ram-raiders, both Graham, on the rapist's trail, and Donovan, trying to infiltrate the dog-ring, undergo serious trials by fire. Taking her already accomplished characterization to new levels of depth and intensity, Bannister creates deeply suspenseful situations, resolves them with panache and melds the various themes into an extremely satisfying whole.
