If anyone could make you feel sorry for a serial killer, it's John Harvey, who always writes with tender feeling about commonplace people -- killers among them -- damaged by criminal violence.
— The New York Times
Flesh and Blood is a superb mystery -- excruciatingly suspenseful, rich in character and all too real in its depiction of the horrific possibilities lurking at the margins of the mundane. The bloodless betrayal revealed at the very end of this story is more shocking in its cool malevolence than any of the gruesome acts of violence that preceded it.
— The Washington Post
Acclaimed for his Charlie Resnick series (Lonely Hearts, etc.), British author John Harvey introduces a new detective hero, Frank Elder, in Flesh and Blood, a competent if plodding story of an old unsolved case and a teenage girl's disappearance. While the dogged Elder shares many habits with Resnick, from a prodigious appetite for common food to a difficulty with maintaining relationships, he lacks his predecessor's zest for life. Agent, Kimberly Witherspoon at Witherspoon Associates. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
After 30 years in the Nottinghamshire police, Frank Elder has retired to escape hassles and an unfaithful wife. Yet even fleeing to Land's End at the southwest tip of England can't prevent his being dogged by memories of the unsolved disappearance of a teenage girl. Soon Elder is drawn into helping the police investigate several violent crimes similar to those done by a man he helped catch 15 years ago. Past seems to merge with present, especially when Elder's own 16-year-old daughter is kidnapped. After ten highly acclaimed Charlie Resnick novels and a standalone (In a True Light), Harvey returns to the procedural (Elder even meets Resnick very briefly) for which he is so rightly praised. Tight plotting, gritty dialog, sympathetic characters and a lot of gray areas are the trademarks of a master still in great form. Highly recommended. Harvey lives in London. [See Mystery Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/04.]-Roland Person, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Britain's second-best cop chronicler (following Ian Rankin) introduces a Nottinghamshire detective inspector whose retirement to Penzance has done nothing to lift his nightmares. Although he jailed her abductors, sadistic Alan McKiernan and his slavish follower Shane Donald, DI Elder is still haunted after 15 years by vanished Susan Blacklock. Now Donald's been paroled, and either he or a copycat is defiling and murdering young girls again. Invited to butt out by Maureen Prior, CID, Elder remembers his promise to Susan's parents to find her. The years have not been kind to them. Her remarried father refuses to discuss her, and her lonely mother still wistfully leaves flowers at the spot where Susan was last seen. Making no headway in tracking Donald, who's gone to ground in a carnival, Elder talks to Susan's drama-school friends, and new facts cast doubts on Shane and McKiernan's guilt. A bit of luck puts Donald within Elder's grasp, but then Elder's teenage daughter Katherine, who lives with her mum Joanne and her mum's long-time lover, vanishes, and Elder is overwhelmed by thoughts of what might be happening to her. McKiernan, it seems, had more than one disciple, and this one is determined to avenge McKiernan's imprisonment. Fans who thought they'd never forgive Harvey (In a True Light, 2002, etc.) for abandoning series character Charlie Resnick may be placated by his cameo appearance here. More important, they'll find the lovelorn Elder a hero to root for. Agent: Sarah Lutyens/Lutyens-Rubinstein Literary Agency, London
Frank Elder, retired from the Nottinghamshire Major Crime Unit, has retreated to remote Cornwall. No matter how far he’s run or how escapist his reading, terrible dreams continue to haunt him. When a rapist-murderer he helped put in prison is released on parole and another teenaged girl disappears, Elder returns as a consultant on the case. Narrator Gordon Griffin develops Elder’s character with subtlety and grace, particularly the bewildering relationship shared with his own 16-year-old daughter. Griffin is stunning when portraying Elder’s confusion with the ex-wife who betrayed him, and he handles each of the fully developed secondary characters with finesse. John Harvey, winner of the Sherlock Award, offers a dark, unsentimental, and expertly crafted story that reveals the inner lives of authority figures, criminals, and victims alike. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
