If I say this is a good holiday read, it's not meant to be a put-down. What I do mean is that it's a good page-turner. I enjoyed Hurley's Joe Faraday series, and his Jimmy Suttle novels are not proving to be a disappointment.

As is usual with Hurley, two linked plots run side by side, in this case involving Jimmy Suttle and his estranged wife Lizzie, each coping in their own way with the death of their child. What makes these books so readable is Hurley's light but believable touch on police procedures, good dialogue, and good research - in this case on mental health - lightly worn. The major characters in this plot are well fleshed-out and believable.

I'm not convinced the visit to Africa brought much to the plot, but overall, an absorbing read. ( )

This is a really good book. It is police procedural with a lot of threads, particularly about madness and how it is recognised and dealt with in this country. I was wary because I had not read the earlier two books, but Hurley weaves the back story into this new investigation quite brilliantly. The lead characters are engaging as are the supporting cast of investigators. The plot is intricate and fascinating. I have read a few Graham Hurley and up until Finisterre i was a little underwhelmed, but now he is very high on my "to read" list. ( )

Jimmy's team is charged with finding the brutal murderer of an old man who spent many years in Africa and appears to have a very long list of enemies. In parallel, Lizzie, Jimmy's estranged wife, decides she needs to understand the background to their daughter's death and write about it to get closure. An intriguing story which shines a light on Britain's less than glorious African past and the reality of the current crisis in mental health provision. ( )

Although I was convinced it was not so, my records tell me that this is the first novel by Graham Hurley that I have reviewed in this history of this blog.

The structure is similar to what we have seen in recent years in British crime fiction: two independent stories connected by a common factor, in this case a married couple, and then threading their way through the manuscript, more or less in step. Almost, in this case, two novels in one.

The murder investigation, undertaken by the team that DS Jimmy Suttle is part of, explores how British colonial administrators treated the local inhabitants, in this case in Kenya, whom they regarded as racially inferior. In fact Suttle and his boss go out to Africa to work out whether a local who recently visited England could be responsible for the gruesome murder, or whether the answer is much closer to home. Meanwhile Suttle's wife Lizzie is trying to make some sense of the death of their four year old daughter Grace. She has been offered a book contract to write about the impact on their lives. Should she take it?

As with novels with similar structure the novel's narrative hops almost without warning from one story to another, making sure the reader stays alert. ( )