Darkness & Light
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A retired cop returns to the mean streets of Nottingham on a murder case that resurrects a haunted past in this “elegantly told tale” (Independent, UK).
When Frank Elder’s ex-wife calls him for a favor, he can’t say no. Her friend Jennie’s sister Claire has gone missing in Nottingham, and she wants him to look into it. Suddenly, he’s back on the job . . . and back in the city where his life fell apart.
Elder uncovers sexual secrets of Claire’s that take Jennie by surprise. But when Claire is found dead at home—unmarked and carefully dressed—it is Elder who is surprised by the similarities to an old case. To solve this riddle, Elder will have to reconnect with Detective Inspector Maureen Prior and delve into dangerous territory, as well as the traumatic histories of several suspects.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Harvey's engaging third British procedural to feature retired policeman Frank Elder (after 2005's Ash & Bone), Elder grudgingly agrees to try to find Claire Meecham, the older, widowed sister of a friend of his ex-wife's. While poking through the missing woman's Nottingham bungalow, Elder finds nothing untoward other than evidence that Claire was not quite so uninterested in sex, and possible new relationships, as her younger sister believed. Soon after, Elder is surprised when Claire turns up in her home dead, looking at peace, carefully dressed and laid out in the manner of a woman who met a similar fate years earlier and whose killer was never caught. Elder's probe of this murder leads him down several blind alleys even as it forces him to re-examine uncomfortable aspects of his own past. Fans of PBS's Mystery will find Harvey's novel, with its scattering of contemporary English slang, a genial read.
