Female detectives tackle crime in same place but in different worlds
POST-WAR and present-day London is the setting for Henrietta McKervey’s third novel about two female detectives who live 100 years apart. A dual narrative about Violet Hill, Edwardian female detective; and Susanna, a modern day Metropolitan police officer, is part-historical fiction, part-contemporary crime novel which cleverly links the two worlds and the people who inhabit them.
Christmas 1918: Violet is hired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s business manager Mr Forrester to investigate a spiritualist who he believes is a fraud and exercising undue influence over his boss and his wife.
Following the loss of their son in the war the Doyles have turned to this spiritualist, called Selbarre, for comfort, and it is Violet’s job to unravel the mystery that surrounds him
and unearth evidence of his manipulation of the grieving Doyles.
But the truth is not so easy to pin down. Nothing and no-one are what they seem.
January 2018: Susanna is a Super-recogniser, one of a tiny percentage of humans who possess extraordinary powers for facial recognition. (They do really exist!) She can remember and identify all faces she has ever seen and spends her days sifting through hours of CCTV footage, making links and connections.
The case she is working on involves a man with flowers and a red umbrella who has been luring women into laneways and assaulting them.
Frustratingly, he has eluded her so far, until one evening while attending a local fair she spots him in the crowd.
At the same moment she sustains an injury to her head, which causes her recogniser skill to disappear. The criminal, who thinks he has been rumbled, closes in and an exciting drama unfolds.
There are interesting thematic and literal parallels between the two stories (a few might seem a little contrived) and the novel melds into a satisfying conclusion.
Each thread is rich in detail, written with an observant eye. From the start the reader is plunged into 1918 London, with the traumatic effects of war very evident on the city and on its people.
The city ‘is a wound whose dressing was taken off too soon’. War veterans are ‘ghosts, returned to haunt the living’.
The Super-recogniser sections piqued my interest. It is a premise I found fascinating, and I would have liked to learn more about how this skill affects their day-to-day living. (I also wouldn’t be averse to reading a follow-up case!)
McKervey succeeds in creating two fully-realised worlds, and what’s most refreshing is that the main characters are strong, independent women.
McKervey’s writing is clear, her descriptions fresh: “A tall thin woman, her hair the colour of unpolished brass;” “A couple of tarts... arms linked tight as cheap twine;” “Smoke and snow move in a soft, uncertain waltz around his face.”
Dialogue is sharp throughout and the setting expertly evoked, allowing the reader to settle in quickly and enjoy the twists and turns.
An assured storyteller with an interesting story to tell.