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15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
John Harvey - Darkness & Light, 30 Jun 2006
Darkness & Light is John Harvey's third and, as far as I'm aware, last, Frank Elder novel. While neither of the most recent quite match the quality of the award-winning first in the series, it's this final one that comes closest; it feels slightly less engaging than the first, but it is plotted more cleanly, more straightforwardly, and Harvey really has, by this stage, found his way into the shoes of Elder. If this is the last of a trilogy, it'll be a shame indeed to leave Frank now, just as we are getting to know him best (perfect for a conclusion though the final moment of the book is).
This time round, Frank is drawn up to Nottingham by a call from his estranged wife: her friend's sister, Claire - a widow in her fifties, quiet and withdrawn - has disappeared. Elder agrees to do some digging around, make sure everything that's been done is slightly more than the cursory stuff that usually would happen. Shortly, Claire is found dead, arranged meticulously on her bed. Frank is severely jarred: the way Clare has been treated, meticulously and almost with care, and the way she disappeared, only to be returned to her house at a later date, seems to mirror the very first case Frank was ever tasked with on the Serious Crimes Unit, a crime which remained unsolved. Now, while Frank is wary of fully throwing himself behind the idea that it may be the same killer, he realises that, if it is, he may have more than a ghost of a chance to bring that old case to justice too.
If ever there was a crime-writer who gets at the real, messy bits of life, it is John Harvey. Possibly the most acclaimed British crime-writer of the 90's, his popular Charlie Resnick series was almost unique in its portrayal of criminals and criminal goings on, and this resurgent series retains that admirable trait. Harvey's characters and criminals are unfailingly real, unflashy; they are recognisable with their small, often unsatisfying human lives, their little disappointments and minor but admirable ambitions. His characters emerge from a real flawed, little-hope world, but one which Harvey seems to care about deeply, one which he renders with poetic dedication and just a little pain in the doing. His criminals are most often deformed and made by their lives; people who never really stood a chance, and only ever make cursory, at best, efforts to swim against the tide their lives take them in. Harvey's criminals are often the most realistic in the business. Their portrayals are far more challenging than the predominantly American concept of being inherently evil, and make for better, more powerful crime fiction.
That - mostly - remains true here. The book is largely excellent; the writing is impassioned and clean, intimate and telling, the characters are presented as well as you'd expect from Harvey, their relationships portrayed very well; the plotting is excellent. The only minor disappointment is the final solution, which is oddly discordant: it fits well, and makes perfect sense, but sits rather uncomfortably in a Harvey book. A particular path in life has still made the wrongdoer, but it is more wildly psychological than social. After the sensible, realistic, shades-of-grey path the novel has taken, some aspects of the solution are then too big to swallow; probably perfectly reasonable in another book, here it jars slightly. (It's possible that this is the point.) That said, it doesn't spoil the book in any way, and in any case the draw of a crime novel is far more than its solution, and this exhibits all Harvey's talents plentifully. I wouldn't recommend starting here (Flesh and Blood is the first in this series), but when you get to this one I'm sure every reader of crime fiction will find lots to enjoy.
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