Hold tight, here we go again. But don’t worry, you may be among murder and prejudice and confused relationships but you’re in the hands of Lynda La Plante and she won’t let you go. In fact you’ll be reading this much later into the night than you’d planned.
Murder Mile is the fourth novel in the story of young Jane Tennison’s career before we first met her in Prime Suspect. This is a great series because the mature Jane is so multi-faceted that we really want to know how she became that woman . Add to that the fact that each step in the story takes you through a crime thriller high in tension and twists and it’s irresistible.
Lynda La Plante always gives you at least three elements of a compulsive read. There is a crime, at least one, to resolve. There is Jane’s struggle against contemporary values and prejudices. And there is a setting which is both accurate in its detail and absolutely believable. We live it with the characters. In this book we find ourselves back in the unenlightened 1970s – February 1979, the Winter of Discontent, to be precise. It was a bleak period in British life. Those who remember it will recall the strikes, the three day week, rubbish and rats in the streets, and to have it recalled so vividly makes me wonder how we coped.
The initial murder seems almost ‘ordinary’: a woman strangled and left in an alley. Competent, promoted to Detective Sergeant, WDS (and that W should alert you to the fact that promotion doesn’t affect sexism) Jane Tennison gets on with the job. But already the male line-up is taking sides and it’s far from clear just who she can rely on. Whatever they say. And then there’s the next body. Much nastier. But in the same area, and just possibly linked. This plot is slow-burn at first but it will grab you until its twists are untangled. And then a casual remark leaves you wondering just how far her colleagues are going to let her dangle.
Jane Tennison isn’t always likeable and she makes mistakes. She also has some hard lessons to learn about who she can trust and when to keep quiet.
This is a worthy sequel and, even better, book five – The Dirty Dozen – is not too far over the horizon.
Murder Mile by Lynda La Plante is published by Bonnier Zaffre. Paperback priced 12.99
Penny Deacon is the author of A Kind of Puritan and A Thankless Child