Synopsis
"Charlie Resnick is one of the most fully realized characters in modern crime fiction."-Sue Grafton
"Such satisfying reading. No wasted time here."-Publishers Weekly
When Nancy Phelan, a young woman who works at the housing office, is kidnapped from outside the office's Christmas party, suspicion falls on a young client who attacked her earlier that day. Little in Resnick's life is that simple, however, especially at Christmas, and as the mystery of Nancy's disappearance deepens, the most trusted of his team, Lynn Kellogg, unwittingly puts herself in the path of a dangerous psychopath.
Publishers Weekly
Harvey's sixth industrial-strength procedural featuring Nottingham copper Charlie Resnick is built of small, delicate images: a young mother warms her hands before touching her sleeping baby in a stone-cold council house; Resnick, foraging in his fridge for the makings of a sandwich, wistfully glances at the face of Billie Holliday on the front of a boxed set of CDs he has just bought himself for Christmas, though he has yet to purchase a CD player. When Nancy Phelan, a social worker, goes missing after a holiday dance, the divorced Resnick meets Dana, her flatmate, and escapes his self-imposed isolation for a brief passionate moment. Nancy's most recent lover is a likely suspect, but the case against him falters and Resnick falls into depression. A number of city cab drivers are robbed and beaten; the cops are looking for someone with a dragon tattoo and very fair hair. The elderly father of a woman cop falls ill; a killer strikes and then takes another victim ; Resnick lets the affair with Dana self-destruct through fear and forgetfulness. Harvey, a poet in thin disguise, constructs his plot masterfully, meting out surprises in subplots that reach their conclusions with sudden, unsynchronous credibility. (Aug.)