Body & Soul

September 3, 2018
At the start of British author Harvey’s darkly atmospheric fourth and final novel featuring former Nottingham detective inspector Frank Elder (after 2006’s Darkness and Light), Elder’s estranged 23-year-old daughter, Katherine, visits him in Cornwall, where he’s been leading a hermitlike existence. When he notices cuts on her wrists and asks about them, she says it was an accident and refuses to say more. That night, she wakes up screaming from a bad dream; the next morning, she returns home to East London without saying goodbye. Elder eventually learns that his emotionally fragile daughter, who’s still recovering from being abducted and tortured when she was 16, has been pushed to the edge by becoming a person of interest in a murder. Meanwhile, the man convicted of kidnapping her escapes while being transferred to a different prison and begins killing again. Only some predictable action leading to the intense climax mars Harvey’s heart-wrenching send-off. Agent: Sarah Lutyens, Lutyens & Rubinstein (U.K.).

October 1, 2018

From the start, mood dominates in this tale, which is both a conventional detective story and a tale of unquenchable fatherly love. Retired police detective Frank Elder is surprised when his daughter Katherine contacts him. When she was 16, she was kidnapped and raped repeatedly. The monster who did it went to jail but the damage was done; Frank and Katherine have been alienated ever since. Now there are cuts on Katherine's wrists, and Frank learns that another man, an artist for whom she modeled, has been abusing her. When the artist is found dead, Katherine is suspect, and Frank is drawn back into detecting to clear her name. At the same time, the rapist escapes during a prison transfer and wends his way across the country, intent on teaching Katharine and Frank one final lesson. Around this violent, almost lurid tale of risk and detection, Harvey ("Charlie Resnick" detective series) weaves a story of deep emotional truth, with good people seeking to restore lost things and regretting their memories. VERDICT There's enough tension in this book to please any lover of a good detective story and quality writing that will satisfy general fiction fans.--David Keymer, Cleveland

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2018
Retired Nottingham copper Frank Elder, appearing here in the fourth and final episode of the series, is in many ways an even more melancholic, depressive hero than Harvey's Charlie Resnick, star of his own classic series, which concluded in 2014 with the appropriately titled Darkness, Darkness?. Like Resnick, Elder constantly carries the weight of his past cases and the pain of lives lost, but whereas Resnick manages to find some solace in small things, like listening to jazz, Elder?isolated in distant Cornwall?only walks the headlands and, if anything, grows more withdrawn and bitter as he marches. When his estranged daughter, Katherine, reenters Elder's life, he immediately realizes she is in trouble. A relationship with an artist has gone very bad, and, when Elder sees the way the painter depicted Katherine in a series of paintings, his pent-up anger bursts to the fore. Soon the painter is murdered, and first Frank and then Katherine are suspects. Trouble lurks on other fronts, too, as Elder, whose life has been defined by his failure to protect his loved ones, struggles to muster his strength for one more attempt to save those who need saving. Harvey writes with great power about the disappointments and tragedies of living, and he always digs deep into the emotional recesses of his characters?all of which makes the devastating ending of this remarkable novel all the more powerful.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)