Aftermath

December 13, 2010
Those with a hankering for a solid police procedural with no distracting subplots will welcome this gripping entry in British author Turnbull's long-running series featuring George Hennessey and Somerled Yellich (Deliver Us from Evil, etc.). When solicitor John Seers inspects the kitchen garden of a vacant mansion while taking inventory, he discovers five mostly skeletal human bodies. Each of the victims was restrained—gagged as well as chained by the wrists behind the back and by the ankle to a large concrete block. The Yorkshire police have a tall order to identify the victims and find out who systematically left them to die a cruel death. True to form, the members of Hennessey's team doggedly search for a common thread uniting the five. While characterization isn't one of the books strong points, the unpredictable story line builds to a surprising closing twist.

January 1, 2011

A harvest of bodies found in the kitchen garden of an estate leads to a whopper of a case for the crew at Micklegate Bar.

Bromyards was the place to work in the tiny village of Milking Nook, on the road between Driffield and York. Mr. Housecarl was kind to his employees and the villagers alike, helping the former with money for emergencies and allowing the latter to poach freely on his land. But as he aged, the landowner withdrew, laying off his staff one by one and ending his days in a single room, living on Meals on Wheels. No wonder that after his death, Housecarl's solicitor finds nearly all the doors of Bromyards stuck shut. But when he tries the door to the walled kitchen garden, it swings open freely, revealing a horrifying sight: at least five bodies in various stages of decomposition. DCI George Hennessey (Deliver Us from Evil, 2010, etc.) assists medical examiner Louise D'Acre in establishing the ages of the corpses and pretty soon matches them with a list of missing women. But Commander Sharkey, trotting out the old chestnut about Johnny Taighe, who died of a stroke after being assigned to senior math, confines Hennessey to his desk. So it's up to Hennessey's mates—Yellich, Webster, Ventnor and Pharoah—to discover how the dead women were connected in life.

Painting domestic details with a pastry brush rather than a spatula, Turnbull delivers a red-meat procedural sure to please the most demanding pound-the-pavement fan.

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February 1, 2011

While inventorying a large estate in Yorkshire, England, an attorney finds a walled kitchen garden with several decomposed corpses chained to the wall. DCI George Hennessey (Deliver Us from Evil) has his hands full with this case. No one handles a police procedural better than Turnbull, throwing a case of murder with no clues, no motive, and no suspects at his team of officers to investigate. VERDICT Fans of Sally Spencer and Cynthia Harrod-Eagles will enjoy this one.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2010
Turnbulls Hennessey and Yellich books may be less well-known than some British police procedurals, but readers who enjoy the genre will find them well worth exploring. Turnbulls writing is smooth, soothing, and low-key, with certain elementsHennesseys dialogues with his dead wife, his ongoing relationship with forensic pathologist Louise DAcre, the starting time and date for each chapterrepeated throughout the series to great effect. In Aftermath, Hennessey and Yellich, along with their colleagues Carmen Pharaoh, Thomson Ventnor, and Reginald Webster, are caught up in the grisly investigation of five bodies found chained together and in varying degrees of decomposition in the kitchen garden of a local estate. The estate owner has just passed away at 92 and has not been outside his bedroom for years, so its clear hes not the killer. But as the investigation continues, Hennessey and company find frustration at every turn until a bizarre connection among the victims turns up. A solid entry in an always reliable series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)