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Linskey, Howard - 'No Name Lane'
Paperback: 496 pages (Mar. 2015) Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0718180321

1993 County Durham in the north east of England. Four young girls have been murdered by someone the Press are calling “The Reaper”. Then a fifth girl goes missing, but she is older than the others at fifteen years of age. The police are desperate to locate her before she too is found dead. However when a dead body is found, it is male and has been buried for many years.

These mysteries bring together three very different people. Tom Carney worked on the local paper before getting a short term contract on one of Fleet Street red tops. He is in disgrace because one of his stories about a Cabinet Minister has resulted in the newspaper being sued. He returns to the north east on paid leave. Helen Norton replaced Tom on the Durham Messenger, and is desperate to be accepted by the male dominated paper. Detective Constable Ian Bradshaw is dedicated but always seems to make the wrong decisions. Both his bosses and his colleagues are scathing of his errors.

All three start to investigate the dead man, the journalists separately from the policeman. Their initial findings seem to lead to the widow of the local respected vicar. Can the police arrest the Reaper before any more girls are murdered? Who is the murdered man and who killed him and why?

The author has written three previous books featuring Newcastle's gangland. This book starts slowly, but you are soon involved in the investigations and the interplay between the different characters.

Recommended.

Geoff Jones, England
April 2015

More European crime fiction reviews can be found on the Reviews page.



last updated 25/04/2015 18:59