Murder Mile

 Murder Mile

Reviewed By  Ian Banks       September 16, 2018

 

Author  Lynda La Plante

Distributor:      Allen and Unwin
ISBN:                 9781785764677
Publisher:         Bonnier/Zaffre
Release Date:   August 2018  

   Website:   https://www.allenandunwin.com

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A market trader in the town of Peckham has discovered the body of a woman lying face down in an ally. In the bitterly cold hours of a winters morning, just before the shift ends Sargent Jane Tennison and her partner Detective Constable Brian Edwards attend the OOO call. The woman is dead, blood on the back of her jacket, buttons from a shirt lying beside her.

A rat crosses their pathway just before their arrival at what will become a crime scene, darting out of the rubbish piled high on the side of the road, left to mount up due to a local council workers strike.

A car with a flat tyre is near the scene of the crime, one that is checked out but not thoroughly as Tennison and her team look for leads into what is fast becoming a very difficult case.  Sybil Hastings, body has been found in the boot of the car, another body without explanation; she has been stabbed multiple times, her son Andrew knows police officers in higher places and demands the killer be found immediately.

A man walking his dog on Peckham Rye finds a human forearm in the piles of putrefying rubbish still lying in the streets as the rubbish strike rolls on. While the officers are searching the area a fox crosses Edwards path, carrying what turns out to be a human hand, minus some of the fingers: It would seem Peckham was fast becoming the dumping ground for bodies; people who had been killed somewhere else and then dumped in the ‘Golden’ Mile or what was to become known as Murder Mile.

Do they have a serial killer in the area, or is this the work of several people. The Press go mad, the bureaucracy within the Police Force are demanding answers, Now!  The terrain the team have to cover to try and catch a killer becomes complex, the options confusing, but when they believe they have identified the killer, obtained a confession and are about to close the case, something so confounding occurs that it makes Tennison and Edwards doubt their own sanity.

This latest thriller from Linda La Plante has her trademark style that of murder most foul, honed to a fine, dark art, drawing the reader in to confront once again, the horror that is humanity at its worst, stamped all over the pages

 A fabulous read once again from the Queen of Murder Mystery that makes you want to leave the lights on at night!

Crime, Fiction