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COLD KILL
by David Lawrence
Michael Joseph, May 2005
448 pages
12.99GBP
ISBN: 0718146557


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

I know I'm not the only crime fiction fan obsessive enough to keep a list of all the books I read over the course of a year, with a rating next to them. Consistently those that score in the Bs and below are the literary equivalent of a Chinese meal -- OK at the time, but soon erased from the mind.

So I decided after an earlier book that I was prepared to cut David Lawrence a lot of slack. His weird, disjointed storytelling won't appeal to everyone, but the cinematic landscape he creates, rather like a bleak black and white film, has been enough for me to want to read his third book, COLD KILL. If you've read any of his novels you won't be surprised to hear he does a lot of scriptwriting. Maybe I'm just fed-up of bloated monsters, but the laidback, laconic style works a treat for me.

DS Stella Mooney, she of the royally tangled private life, is back with no less chaotic a set-up outside of work. She still drinks far too much, but George the boring boat builder has gone off to America, and she is now an item with journalist John Delaney. Sort of.

Meanwhile, a young woman is found dead in a freezing cold London park. It looks like an open-and-shut case when an oddball called Robert Kimber walks into the police station the next day and admits to the murder. But Stella isn't convinced. And her vibes appear to be spot-on when it emerges that there's an even scarier figure lurking behind Kimber.

Lawrence can do chilling baddies -- it took me a while to get the Serbian hitman from THE DEAD SIT ROUND IN A RING out of my mind. And he can also skewer the city in the depths of a perishingly cold winter as Stella's investigations keep bringing her back to the sink estate where she grew up.

The characterisation is generally stronger in COLD KILL, as the focus pulls in both Delaney and his own investigations for a feature on the homeless, and Stella's rag-tag collection of colleagues, seemingly all with their complicated private lives or yukky ailments. The villains remain somewhat one-dimensional, though, as the verging on the over-used diary format keeps the reader at arm's length.

So yes, the jury was out after THE DEAD SIT ROUND IN A RING. But they've returned to deliver a positive verdict for Lawrence and COLD KILL.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, June 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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