Friday, April 17, 2015

Fatal Games - Mari Hannah

Fatal Games
Mari Hannah
HarperCollins/Witness Impulse, Apr 7 2015, $11.99
ISBN: 9780062387134

On Bambaugh Beach just below the Bambaugh Castle in Northumberland, a father and child find human bones.  Leaving Newcastle with her team, Detective Chief Inspector Kate Daniels leads the investigation hampered by increasingly bad weather and the poor terrain.  Forensic anthropologist Abby Hunt says the victims were both females with one being a teen and the other a tweener.  However every time Kate and Detective Sergeant Hank Gormley believe they made progress on resolving what happened to the two young girls, more questions arise especially when more corpses are found; as the case to the chagrin of everyone involved seems heading to the cold files. 

Psychologist Emily McCann returns to work at nearby HMP Northumberland Category B Prison for the first time since her husband died a few months ago.  Although worried about her young daughter Rebecca being without her for the first time since she lost her dad, Emily also fears her fascination with convicted sexual predator Walter Fearon who will soon be released after his seven year sentence for raping an elderly woman ends.  Emily also is concerned with Fearon’s return to society.  Clues finally lead the police to diabolically brilliant Fearon at the prison where Kate’s former lover psychologist Jo Soulsby works.

The fourth Kate Daniels police procedural (see Deadly Deceit, Settled Blood and The Murder Wall) is a very dark atmospheric mystery.  In a cold foreboding background and character-driven especially by Fearon and the prison staff perhaps even more than the DCI and her team, subgenre fans will want to read this exhilarating British whodunit.


Harriet Klausner

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