Denial of Murder: A Harry Vicary police procedural

Harry Vicary #4

by Peter Turnbull

Two bodies, two similar causes of death . . . Harry Vicary and his team are plunged into a complex investigation where all is not as it seems.

When the bodies of two murder victims are discovered within twenty-four hours of each other at the same location, each with a similar cause of death, the Murder and Serious Crime Squad of New Scotland Yard realise they must be linked. But how? Vicary and his team are drawn into a complex investigation - one which will take them from remote cottages in rural Hampshire to the dark world of inner city sex workers, child abuse within north London suburbia, and the injustice of a long-standing wrongful conviction.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, British Literature

213 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2014

About the author

Peter Turnbull is the author of nineteen previous novels and numerous works of short fiction. He worked for many years as a social worker in Glasgow before returning to his native Yorkshire.

Reviews

[Jill H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A typical entry in the Turnbull series of short police procedurals.........clever plot, lots of padding with conversations that don't move the story along, and no character development. But I keep reading his books for some reason so there obviously is something there that is worth returning to. A good read for a rainy afternoon.

[Eleanor Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started of good , but didn't like the rest of it

[Mark Hanson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the plot but found the overuse of repetition in the dialogue very irritating! Stephen Fry once wrote “some authors use words for the sake of using words “. This is a classic example of!

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much time spend on like every street a person travelled by foot multiple times
Tell me point a abd end don't need pages of description

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable. Quite old fashioned dialogue. Try another.

[Judy Lesley · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title of this novel tells the reader that this will be a police procedural so I was expecting that. What I wasn’t expecting was that it would be absolutely nothing but a police procedural. Minimal description, clipped on-topic-only dialog, and a tiny amount of character revelation which more often left me more confused than informed is what I found here. If you want to be a fly on the wall to listen in while police have strategy sessions, attend postmortem examinations, and interview witnesses……..well, this is definitely the book for you. Frankly, it was more bare-bones than any mystery novel I’ve ever read and not a favorite style of mine, but I can understand how readers who want only to concentrate on the crime involved and the processes used to solve the crime would like it.

Detective Inspector Harry Vicary is the head of this team with four investigators in the Murder and Serious Crime Squad of New Scotland Yard. Members of the team are Frankie Brunnie, Tom Ainsclough, Penny Yewdall, and Victor Swanell. Also featured is John Shaftoe, the forensic pathologist. I think these characters were present in the previous three novels in this series since none of them was introduced as new to the team. A milkman on the early morning portion of his route has found the body of a dead man lying in the street between parked cars in the suburb of Wimbledon. When Vicary and his team arrive to investigate they discover that a car, later found to have been stolen, was set ablaze a few streets away the previous night in this same section of Wimbledon. The investigation begins to identify the victim and determine the cause of death. Twenty-four hours later a second body and a second burned out vehicle are found in the exact same locations. Now police must work to try to find a link between these two victims and hope that link will lead to the killer.

As I’ve said, this novel was not a favorite of mine. I like to feel that I get to know the characters in a story and I got no personal involvement here at all. It was also clear very early on who the officers would be looking for so the only discovery for me as a reader was to learn the past histories of all the victims, witnesses, and criminals uncovered and watch as the police gathered evidence to make arrests. There was this really annoying element of having snatches of dialog repeated two or three times during conversations which was quite irritating for me. Bare-bones, cut-to-the-chase, no time wasted on the feelings or personalities of the official investigation team; these all describe what I found in this novel. Perhaps it will suit your reading pleasure more than it did mine. This is not a bad book, it just did not make me want to read any other novels by this author.

I received an ARC of this novel through NetGalley. The opinions expressed are my own.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gritty police procedural, likeable police people, not so much the other characters. A quibble: EVERY character GASPS when saying something. Not, "..."she said in surprise, or in dismay, or in shock, or in horror. I can think of lots of other words for "gasp". And I think it's pretty hard to gasp and speak at the same time. Where was the editor??

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

The police procedural part of this book is OK but the writing and particularly the dialogue is almost laughably stilted, reminding me of a kind of grown-up Dick and Jane murder mystery. Wierdly fun to read because of this.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging British police procedural...good story, short book format, but a satisfying read!

[Nicola Richardson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Found the writing style strange, lots of repetition, and thought the story was pretty uninspired too- not different enough from anything else out there. Could have made much more of why both dumped in same place even though the place had no link to them. I won't be reading any more of the books in this series.