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A woman is found brutally murdered and Detective Jo Birmingham is first on the scene. Her actions bring her under unwelcome scrutiny from her boss, who also happens to be her estranged husband. More killings follow in quick succession and Jo struggles to find the link between them. She's sure they are connected, but proving it is another matter entirely. At the same time Jo has to fight her corner to stay in charge of the investigation. The book gets off to a good start, showing Jo Birmingham in action in a tense situation involving trying to talk a man down who is determined to jump to his death in Dublin's docklands, taking his young daughter with him. Birmingham comes over as no-nonsense and unconventional and O'Connor handles the introductory scene well. The glimpses of Birmingham's tangled home life are convincing, evoking sympathy for a woman bringing up a teenage boy and a new baby, while struggling to succeed in her career, hampered by the fact that she is still working under the direct supervision of her ex-husband. Her love for her children, including the late baby that caused the split in her marriage, comes over well without being in any way laboured. I was less convinced, though, by some of Jo's actions, which simply served to place her handling of the investigation in justifiable jeopardy. For me, the most enjoyable part of the book was the sub-plot revolving around the daughter of crime reporter, Ryan Freeman, abducted by a crime boss wanting leverage over him. The girl is returned physically unharmed, but so traumatized that she is unable to speak. The link between this abduction and the various murders depicted in brutal – but fortunately not unnecessarily graphic – detail provides a thought-provoking thread to link other events together. My main criticism lies in what I felt were odd details thrown into the plot that were never adequately explained and left me with a feeling of having missed out on something. Why did the murderer overturn a tank of tropical fish and select one in particular to stamp on? If there was a point to this, then it escaped me. I felt the same with O'Connor's impassioned plea in the book for separate representation in the trial process for the victims of crime. This is a theme that would have been better represented in a book where it was of more actual relevance to the plot. But in spite of this, O'Connor paints a convincing picture of a woman with deep-seated convictions doing her best to juggle family and work, and not always succeeding as well as she would like. At the end of the book I wanted to find out where Birmingham will go next in her relationship with her husband and I hope this is something that we'll see addressed in what will clearly become an on-going series. § Linda Wilson is a writer, and retired solicitor, with an interest in archaeology and cave art, who now divides her time between England and France.
Reviewed by Linda Wilson, March 2011
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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