April crime round-up – part two
Part two of April’s round-up features four reissues from the P. D. James backlist, interviews with eminent pathologists and historical crime fiction in Yorkshire and Russia.
A Matter of Life and Death: Inside the Hidden World of the Pathologist, by Sue Armstrong
A Matter of Life and Death profiles some of the world’s most eminent and pioneering pathologists. This is a hidden world, yet one we will all inevitably encounter at some time in our lives, for pathology lies at the cornerstone of modern medicine. It is pathologists who are responsible for recognising new diseases such as AIDS, SARS or bird flu, and for diagnosing which cancer a patient is suffering from. And it is pathologists who must explain the cause of death at the autopsy table. A Matter of Life and Death tells fascinating stories of mysterious illnesses and miraculous scientific breakthroughs. But it is also crammed full of extraordinary characters – from the forensic anthropologist with his own Body Farm in Tennessee to the doctor who had a heart-and-lung transplant and ended up using her own lungs for research.
The Last Train to Scarborough, by Andrew Martin
A riveting new adventure for Jim Stringer, Andrew Martin’s celebrated ‘Steam Detective’.
It is March 1914, and Jim Stringer is uneasy about his next assignment.
It’s not so much the prospect of a Scarborough lodging house in the gloomy off-season that bothers him, or even the fact that the last railwayman to stay in the house has disappeared without trace. It’s more that his governor, Chief Inspector Saul Weatherhill, seems to be deliberately holding back details of the case – and that he’s been sent to Scarborough with a trigger-happy assistant. The lodging house is called Paradise, but, as Jim discovers, it’s hardly that in reality. It is, however, home to the seductive and beautiful Amanda Rickerby, a woman evidently capable of derailing Jim’s marriage – and a good deal more besides. As a storm brews in Scarborough, it becomes increasingly unlikely that Jim will ever ride the train back to York.
Winterland, by Alan Glynn
The worlds of business, politics and crime collide when two men with the same name, from the same family, die on the same night – one death is a gangland murder, the other, apparently, a road accident. Was it a coincidence? That’s the official version of events. But then a family member, Gina Rafferty, starts asking questions.
Devastated by her loss, Gina’s grief is tempered, and increasingly fuelled, by anger. The more she hears that it was all a coincidence – that gangland violence is commonplace; that people die on our roads every day of the week – the less she’s prepared to accept it. Told repeatedly that she should stop asking questions, she becomes more determined than ever to establish a connection between the two deaths – and in doing so she embarks on a path that will push certain powerful people to their limits.
A Razor Wrapped in Silk,by R. N. Morris
St. Petersburg. 1870. A child factory worker is mysteriously abducted. A society beauty is sensationally murdered. Two very different crimes show up the deep fissures in Russian society during the late tsarist period. The first is barely noticed by the authorities. The latter draws the full investigative might of St Petersburg’s finest, led by magistrate Porfiry Petrovich.
The dead woman had powerful friends – including at least one member of the Romanov family – so when the tsar’s notorious secret police become involved, it seems that both crimes may have a political – not to say revolutionary – aspect, which takes Porfiry inside the Winter Palace for a confrontation with the Tsar himself. The usually incisive magistrate grows increasingly unsure what to believe, who to trust and how to proceed. His very life appears to be in danger, though from whom he can’t be sure.
Shroud for a Nightingale, by P.D. James
The young women of Nightingale House are there to learn to nurse and comfort the suffering. But when one of the students plays patient in a demonstration of nursing skills, she is horribly, brutally killed. Another student dies equally mysteriously and it is up to Adam Dalgliesh to unmask a killer who has decided to prescribe murder as the cure for all ills.
The Black Tower, by P.D. James
Commander Dalgliesh is recuperating from a life-threatening illness when he receives a call for advice from an elderly friend who works as a chaplain in a home for the disabled on the Dorset coast. Dalgliesh arrives to discover that Father Baddeley has recently and mysteriously died, as has one of the patients at Toynton Grange. Evidently the home is not quite the caring community it purports to be. Dalgliesh is determined to discover the truth of his friend’s death, but further fatalities follow and his own life is in danger as he unmasks the evil at the heart of Toynton Grange.
Devices and Desires, by P. D. James
When Commander Adam Dalgliesh visits Larksoken, a remote headland community on the Norfolk coast in the shadow of a nuclear power station, he expects to be engaged only in the sad business of tying up his aunt’s estate. But the peace of Larksoken is illusory. A serial killer known as the Whistler is terrorising the neighbourhood and Dalgliesh is drawn into the lives of the headlanders when it quickly becomes apparent that the Whistler isn’t the only murderer at work under the sinister shadow of the power station.
Unnatural Causes, by P. D. James
Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh had been looking forward to a quiet holiday at his aunt’s cottage on Monksmere Head, one of the furthest-flung spots on the remote Suffolk coast. With nothing to do other than enjoy long wind-swept walks, tea in front of the crackling wood fire and hot buttered toast, Dalgliesh was relishing the thought of a well-earned break.
However, all hope of peace is soon shattered by murder. The mutilated body of a local crime writer, Maurice Seaton, floats ashore in a drifting dinghy to drag Adam Dalgliesh into a new and macabre investigation.
