Silent Footsteps

July 30, 2018
Bannister’s fanciful fifth mystery featuring former security analyst Gabriel Ash and Constable Hazel Best (after 2017’s Other Countries) finds Ash, who was invalided out of the British intelligence service due to a nervous breakdown, running a newly opened bookshop in Norbold, England. Since he doesn’t need the money, he’s not concerned about attracting customers. He soon has something important to worry about when his two young sons are involved in a kidnapping attempt outside their school. Fortunately, Hazel is on hand to save the day. She investigates and discovers a connection between the kidnappers and a murder case 17 years previously. The friendship between the two leads develops at a snail’s pace in each successive book. Will they? Won’t they? Should they? The strongest supporting character is Patience, a dog with whom Ash holds long conversations. Ash thinks these exchanges may be a residual effect from the posttraumatic stress he suffered. Patience—to whose thoughts the reader is privy—considers this interpretation hogwash. This is a book for lovers of high-class soap opera and intelligent canines. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Co. (U.K.).

July 1, 2018
In their fifth outing, damaged ex-intelligence operative Gabriel Ash and his friend PC Hazel Best (Other Countries, 2017, etc.) tackle an abortive kidnapping that gradually, gradually reveals murderous depth.Since his spiteful ex-wife, Cathy, already abducted their sons once and held them for four years, there's every reason for Gabriel to assume she's behind a second attempt to grab them as their school is being dismissed, an attempt foiled by the quick, decisive intervention of Hazel. But the obvious explanation can't be true if, as 9-year-old Gilbert Ash maintains, the kidnappers' real target was his nanny, Frankie Kelly. "I am not kidnap material," Frankie robustly assures DI Dave Gorman. And she's right; this second theory of the attempted crime turns out to be as flawed as the first. Shortly after Hazel finally figures out who the intended target was, the woman vanishes, leaving behind a lack of bona fides that show she'd been living a lie for 16 years. Undaunted, Hazel tries out a third theory: The kidnapping was one step in a deep-laid plot to avenge the death of Jennifer Harbinger, shot back in 2001 by police officers who weren't supposed to be present while she was handing off 1.5 million pounds to the thieves who'd stolen 15 million pounds worth of paintings from her husband, road transport owner Jerome Harbinger. Harbinger's now retired and confined to a wheelchair, but that's not to say he couldn't have hired the hapless pair who bungled the latest kidnapping. Is that the truth Hazel seeks, or is her third theory wrong as well?Not much mystery here, and you'll forget the culprit before you return Bannister's latest to the shelf. What continues to shine in this series is the warts-and-all friendship that makes her hero and heroine, each one a perfectly reasonable sleuth, such an unlikely team.

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March 11, 2019
At the start of Bannister’s diverting sixth Hazel Best and Gabriel Ash mystery (after 2018’s Kindred Spirits), Hazel, a constable in Norbold, England, disarms a low-level thug, Trucker Watts, who’s menacing a fellow passenger on a train. A short time later, someone kills Watts and leaves his body by a large waste container. Hazel subsequently uncovers a link between Watts and a shady Birmingham businessman. Meanwhile, Hazel becomes the target of a stalker, whose anonymous attentions escalate from bouquets and chocolates to deadlier tributes. An assault on her close friend Gabriel, a former spy who now runs a secondhand bookshop, raises the stakes. Readers, unlike Hazel, will have little difficulty spotting the villain, who lures her into the woods, where Ash sends his dog, Patience, with whom he has frequent conversations, in search of Hazel. Ash’s eccentric musings and Hazel’s impetuous behavior offer some entertaining interludes, as do Patience’s telepathic responses to Ash. Fans of offbeat police procedurals will be rewarded. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Co. (U.K.).

April 15, 2019
A young British policewoman, a mental patient turned bookshop owner, a talking dog, and a deadly stalker hardly seem to make for a cohesive crime story, but in Bannister's capable hands, the pieces fit together perfectly. PC Hazel Best is on a train when a young lout with a knife threatens another man. Hazel steps in to defuse the situation and wins the grateful thanks of intended victim Benny Price. When a box of chocolates appears on Hazel's doorstep a few days later, with no indication of who sent it, she thinks it could have come from Benny. Then she's called to a shopping mall, where the body of the man who tried to attack Benny is found bludgeoned to death. Later, Hazel's teenage lodger goes missing, and she is lured to a remote spot in the hope of finding the boy. Offbeat, clever, and skillfully written, with memorable characters, gentle humor, a twisty plot?and chocolates!(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)