Darkness & Light

by John Harvey

Overview

A retired cop returns to the mean streets of Nottingham on a murder case that resurrects a haunted past in this “elegantly told tale” (Independent, UK).

When Frank Elder’s ex-wife calls him for a favor, he can’t say no. Her friend Jennie’s sister Claire has gone missing in Nottingham, and she wants him to look into it. Suddenly, he’s back on the job . . . and back in the city where his life fell apart.

Elder uncovers sexual secrets of Claire’s that take Jennie by surprise. But when Claire is found dead at home—unmarked and carefully dressed—it is Elder who is surprised by the similarities to an old case. To solve this riddle, Elder will have to reconnect with Detective Inspector Maureen Prior and delve into dangerous territory, as well as the traumatic histories of several suspects.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780547628004
Publisher:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date:	05/12/2021
Series:	Frank Elder Series , #3
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	842,715
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

John Harvey is the author of the richly praised Charlie Resnick novels, the first of which, Lonely Hearts, was named by the Times (London) as one of the 100 Best Crime Novels of the Century. His novels featuring Frank Elder include Flesh & Blood, which won the British Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger Award and a 2005 Barry Award, and Ash & Bone. Harvey lives in Great Britain.
John Harvey (b. 1938) is an incredibly prolific British mystery writer. The author of more than one hundred books, as well as poetry and scripts for television and radio, Harvey did not begin writing professionally until 1975. Until then he was a teacher, educated at Goldsmiths College, London, who taught literature, drama, and film at colleges across England. After cutting his teeth on paperback fiction, Harvey debuted his most famous character, Charlie Resnick, in 1989’s Lonely Hearts, which the English Times called one of the finest crime novels of the century. A police inspector noted for his love of both sandwiches and jazz, Resnick has starred in eleven novels and one volume of short stories. The BBC has adapted two of the Resnick novels, Lonely Hearts and Rough Treatment (1990), for television movies. Both starred Academy Award–nominated actor Tom Wilkinson and had screenplays written by Harvey. Besides writing fiction, Harvey spent over twenty years as the head of Slow Dancer Press. He continues to live and write in London.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
1965
BEHIND HIS SPECTACLES, THE BOY’S EYES WERE LIKE bevelled glass.
 
Alice Silverman turned in her chair and adjusted the window blind so that the late summer light fell muted into the room. All the surfaces— the pale wood table, the backs and arms of both chairs, the long low cabinet of shallow drawers— hummed with a shimmer of honeyed dust. Each drawer in the cabinet was marked clearly with the name of the child to whom it belonged; some, those of the youngest, had an animal brightly painted beside the handle, a dolphin, a diplodocus, a brown bear with outsize feet and a big red bow at its neck.
Close to Alice’s slim wrist rested the unlined pad on which, occasionally, she noted down words or phrases in a neat hand, or otherwise doodled, crosshatching dark corners that might be clouds or trees. Between herself and the boy there were sheets of unmarked paper, some coloured, some plain, and near them a wooden box filled with pencils, chalks, and crayons.
“There’s plenty of paper here,” Alice said. “You could draw something. Make me a picture.”
  
Barely a flicker of response in those eyes.
“It’s difficult, isn’t it?” Alice said. “Part of you wants to, but part of you doesn’t.”
Still nothing.
She had asked him before, not asked him, chivvied him, told him. Needing a response. Something she could push against. Not wanting him to be too comfortable. None of those namby-pamby social-worker questions— What had he done in the holidays? What was his favourite group, the Beatles or the Stones?
Alice looked at him and the boy shuffled awkwardly on his chair until he was sitting almost sideways, head down, face angled away.
The Stones, she thought, it had to be. For her, at least. The words to “Mother’s Little Helper” running through her head. The thrust of Jagger’s skinny hips, the cruel lewdness of his lips.
A shiver ran through her and she sensed the boy stiffen as if somehow he had noticed.
 
THE REFERRAL HAD COME FROM THE BOY’S TEACHER INItially, not based on any one particular thing, more an accumulation of incidents that had alerted her to some underlying malaise that went beyond the norm. Sudden mood swings, outbursts of temper, tears; several occasions on which he’d soiled himself in the playground, or once, in class, an incident, quite possibly misinterpreted, between himself and the school secretary when they had been alone in her office, something vaguely sexual.
Alice had read the reports, hummed and hawed, finally found a place in her schedule. Almost five years now since she had finished her training, three since taking up her post with this authority. The younger children, seven, eight, nine, she felt less anxious with, more in control. Boys like this, though, edging eleven, slightly built but with something threatening about them nevertheless, something confrontational beating just beneath the skin . . .
Sensing the allotted time drawing to a close, Alice allowed herself to glance down at her watch; capped and uncapped her pen, then told herself not to fidget. A cup of tea and a biscuit: two more sessions and then she was through. Another day. Tonight there was a Buñuel at the Film Society. Viridiana. Maybe she’d go along, take her mind off work, relax.
“All right then,” Alice said, as brightly as she could. “I’ll see you again next week.”
 
Copyright © John Harvey 2006
 
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
 
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

Editorial Reviews

Even as Elder interviews these men, he is trying to reestablish communication with his college-age daughter, whose abduction and rape a few years earlier he thinks he should have prevented. He's also wondering if he should have forgiven his ex-wife for the affair that caused him to end their marriage. Both challenges, personal and professional, are credibly resolved. The bonus, in this well-crafted police procedural, is the occasional elegance of Harvey's writing.
— The Washington Post

Patrick Anderson

In Harvey's engaging third British procedural to feature retired policeman Frank Elder (after 2005's Ash & Bone), Elder grudgingly agrees to try to find Claire Meecham, the older, widowed sister of a friend of his ex-wife's. While poking through the missing woman's Nottingham bungalow, Elder finds nothing untoward other than evidence that Claire was not quite so uninterested in sex, and possible new relationships, as her younger sister believed. Soon after, Elder is surprised when Claire turns up in her home dead, looking at peace, carefully dressed and laid out in the manner of a woman who met a similar fate years earlier-and whose killer was never caught. Elder's probe of this murder leads him down several blind alleys even as it forces him to re-examine uncomfortable aspects of his own past. Fans of PBS's Mystery will find Harvey's novel, with its scattering of contemporary English slang, a genial read. (July) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Claire Meecham has been missing for a week when Frank Elder's ex-wife calls him for help in finding her. Frank, retired from the Nottingham police and now living in Cornwall, is reluctant to return, but he does in the hopes of seeing his estranged daughter. Claire is found strangled, and the case reminds Elder of a similar murder he investigated. To solve the crime, he is asked to work with his former sergeant, Maureen Prior. What had begun as a deceptively simple disappearance turns into a complex story of psychological motivation and hatred. Devotees of British police procedurals will demand this. Harvey, author of the much-acclaimed Charlie Resnick novels (Resnick makes a cameo appearance here) and two other Frank Elder books (Flesh & Blood), has won a number of awards, including the British Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger Award. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

A favor for his ex takes retired cop Frank Elder from Cornwall to Nottingham. He could have refused her, but Frank Elder once more does what his ex-wife asks, this time helping out her friend Jennie, whose widowed sister Claire Meecham had gone missing. Middle-aged, conventional, still grieving for her husband after five years, Claire was not one to scamper away. Frank checks in with his old mates at the Major Crime Unit, now called the Force Crime Directorate, but they have nothing to add. Though he does find a few revelatory bits-a sexy photo and a sex toy hidden in Claire's bureau, log-ins to online dating services-Frank is stymied. Then Claire's body suddenly appears, strangled in her own bed. Viewing the corpse with DI Maureen Prior, Frank harks back to his very first case, the murder of Irene Fowler eight years ago, which went unsolved. The similarities, including the perversely respectful way the bodies were left, suggest a single killer. Prior's squad trawls through the old files for clues while Frank, an unpaid consultant, concentrates on interviewing the men Claire found online until he uncovers a fatal link between the victims. Yes, Charlie Resnick makes a cameo appearance, but Frank (Ash & Bone, 2005, etc.), with his guilt, his regrets, his worrisome relationships with his wife and daughter, is surely developing his own fan base and giving both Charlie and John Rebus a run for their money.

Kirkus Reviews