Desperate Measures

October 5, 2015
In Bannister’s uneven third mystery featuring former security analyst Gabriel Ash and Norbold, England, police officer Hazel Best (after 2014’s Perfect Sins), the pair learn that Ash’s wife and two sons, kidnapped by Somali pirates four years earlier, are alive. The pirates promise to release them if Ash broadcasts his own suicide. With help from his former supervisor at the Home Office, he fakes his death and goes into hiding while intelligence agencies pursue the pirates. Meanwhile, Hazel becomes suspicious of his wife’s account of captivity and launches her own investigation. Bannister relies on stereotypes and clichés for the shadowy Somali pirates, and other characters lack nuance and depth. The narrative often becomes bogged down in overabundant explication. Still, damaged Ash and chipper Hazel are a compelling-enough duo to keep readers turning pages. Ash’s talking dog, Patience, will delight animal lovers, and a subplot involving a homeless teen provides a heartwarming contrast to Ash’s conniving wife. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Company (U.K.).

October 1, 2015
Inverting the proportions of Hazel Best's last adventure (Perfect Sins, 2014), Bannister supplements the continuing misfortunes of Hazel's friend Gabriel Ash with a modest new case involving a computer that gets found under remarkably suspicious circumstances. None of Gabriel's training as a security analyst taught him what to do when his wife and sons were kidnapped by Somali pirates four years ago. So he's mostly gone into a funk. Now he's finally heard from Cathy, but the news isn't good. The price for the release of her and the boys, her captors insist in a phone call arranged through arms manufacturer Stephen Graves, is that Gabriel, whose intelligence and tenacity still scare them, kill himself on a live webcast. Meanwhile, Gabriel's homeless teenage friend Saturday, nee Saul Desmond, undeterred by the fact that Hazel's on extended medical leave from the Meadowvale Police, has brought her a little problem of his own: a laptop computer he claims to have found in the men's room of a local service station. DI Dave Gorman and his officers promptly identify the computer's owner, structural engineer Charles Armitage, and return his property, but the problems, to the sorrow of everyone involved, don't end there. This second case, abruptly and unsatisfactorily wound up, is nothing more than a pendant to Gabriel's frantic attempt to win Cathy's freedom from shadowy figures whose identities gradually become unpleasantly clear. Not the most penetrating of Bannister's many studies of damaged souls but one of the cleverest and fastest-moving and the one that heaps perhaps the most additional damage on its sorely tried hero before the final curtain.

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December 1, 2015

After a cliff-hanger ending in Perfect Sins, Bannister's third series outing finds police officer Hazel Best and her friend Gabriel Ash in a state of disbelief. Ash's kidnapped wife, Cathy, has made contact; the Somali pirates holding her are willing to make a deal for her return, but it is not one that either Ash or Hazel can live with. Desperate to get his family back, Ash comes up with a plan he shares with no one, to Hazel's dismay. When Hazel sees the results of Ash's actions, she is shocked into making big decisions of her own that will change both their lives forever. VERDICT Bannister stays true to her reputation for excellent police procedurals. Readers will be unable to put down this latest tale of suspense.--Lisa O'Hara, Univ. of Manitoba Libs., Winnipeg

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