Darkness, Darkness

Starred review from July 14, 2014
Diamond Dagger Award–winner Harvey’s elegiac 12th Charlie Resnick novel (after 2008’s Cold in Hand) will be the final one, according to his afterword. The destruction of an old apartment terrace in the Nottinghamshire village of Bledwell Vale, in England’s coal-mining country, reveals a human skeleton. Dental records identify the remains as those of Jenny Hardwick, missing since 1984. An outspoken advocate for the miners, Jenny was the wife of a scab, one of the men who crossed the picket lines to keep providing for their families. Det. Insp. Catherine Njoroge takes charge of the investigation, and recruits Res­nick, who has been working as civilian investigator on cold cases, since he has first-hand experience of the divisive, violent miner’s strike of the mid-1980s. The hunt for Jenny’s killer runs in parallel to the scenes from the strike in this ambitious narrative, and the reader is also given a shocking glimpse into Catherine’s troubled domestic life. Some readers may find the Thatcher-era politics a slog, but the excellent writing, strong characterizations, and the genial, jazz-loving Resnick make this a suitable conclusion for Harvey’s fictional creation. Agent: Sarah Lutyens, Lutyens & Rubinstein (U.K.).

Starred review from October 1, 2014
In his last case, former DI Charlie Resnick revisits a mystery from his own past in Harvey's moving and moody 12th series installment. The discovery of a body under concrete at a Nottinghamshire home ignites a long-dormant investigation: the search for answers concerning the disappearance-and now murder-of Jenny Hardwick in 1984. Thirty years ago, Resnick was a newly promoted DI amid the increasingly violent British Miners' Strike and the growing hatred for Margaret Thatcher. He ran undercover operations, sending coppers disguised as union sympathizers into the ranks of the protesters to gather intel. Now, three decades later, he's officially retired but working as a civilian investigator when the skeletonized remains are identified as Jenny Hardwick. DI Catherine Njoroge, a friend of Resnick's in the East Midlands Serious Organised Crime Unit, lands the cold case and asks Resnick for help given his familiarity with the tense months of the strike. While women joining the striking miners was not unusual, Jenny's situation was complicated by the fact that her husband, Barry, still worked in the mines, dividing their household into "scab" and protester. Harvey (Cold in Hand, 2008, etc.) seamlessly weaves together the present-day investigation into Jenny's death-a process complicated by not only the passage of time, but also the lingering distrust stirred up by the strike and its aftermath-and the last weeks of Jenny's life. As Resnick revisits one of Britain's most painful events, he wrestles mightily with his own grief over the death of his girlfriend and struggles with the inevitability of his finite time as a detective.

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Starred review from August 1, 2014

After more than three decades with the Nottingham police, Charlie Resnick has retired, helping out with interviews but increasingly aware of how time has passed. When the body of Jenny Hardwick, killed 30 years earlier, turns up, the young female DI in charge of the case asks Charlie to join her team because of his knowledge of the time and place--the 1984 coal strike during which he led an intelligence unit. Chapters vary between Jenny at the time, a rabid strike supporter and rising union star, and Charlie in the present but looking back in time for answers. VERDICT Harvey's first Resnick novel, 1989's Lonely Hearts, is one of the London Times List of 100 Best Crime Novels of the last century and there has been no diminishment in quality in the 11 books since. This is Resnick's final case, and every reader of contemporary mystery fiction should be acquainted with this outstanding series and its jazz-loving protagonist whose stories limn the changing world around him. Increasingly, Charlie is an observer more than an actor, but he remains an unforgettable creation.--Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 15, 2014
Thankfully, Harvey decided against his original plan to kill off Charlie Resnick, the Nottingham copper who starred in what appeared to be a 10-novel series, ending with Last Rites in 1999. He gave us an exquisite if tragic coda in Cold in Hand (2008), and now he offers one more, definitively final episode in the storm-tossed career of the detective whose focus on finding the uncovered fact is perpetually clouded by his abiding melancholy over what those facts reveal about the all-too-human lives of the individuals caught in the backlash of crime, both victims and perpetrators. This time the retired Resnick is asked for help by former colleague Catherine Njoroge, who is leading the investigation of the murder of a woman who disappeared nearly 30 years earlier. The case goes back to the British Miners' Strike in the 1980s, when Resnick was a newly promoted detective inspector charged with tracking the activities of the strikers. Resnick was troubled by the assignment then, and the disappearance of Jenny Hardwick, one of the union activists, only rankled him further. The belated discovery of her body prompts him to help Njoroge in tracking back the case to its origins. Jumping between the present and the time of the strike, Harvey vividly re-creates a tipping point in Thatcher-era history while bringing us up to date on how Resnick has been dealing with his retirement. It is, as always in this series, an ambiguity-drenched picture, with the aging Resnick, well free of the job and its bureaucratic entanglements, still mourning lives lost and attenuated endings. So it is with this case, which reveals, inevitably, more darkness than clarity, despite the uncovered facts. We leave Resnick still breathing, thank God, and anticipating, as Harvey notes in a moving afterword, yet another version of Thelonious Monk's Blue Monk. The Resnick novels remain one of the high points in the history of crime fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)