lightreads (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightreads) wrote2018-08-04 09:56 pm
lightreads) wrote2018-08-04 09:56 pm
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Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham
Talking to the Dead
3/5. Young welsh policewoman works on a case involving the murder of a prostitute and her daughter. Which is not really the point of this book; the point is the protagonist's profound mental illness. It's an unsubtle, upsetting kind of psychosis with profound trauma at its root. Trauma so profound the protagonist doesn't even know it's there for most of the book, even though it dictates almost everything she does. It's well done, so much so that I found it overwhelmingly stressful and dislocating to read. She makes incredibly bad, unprofessional decisions because of her illness, and also terrifyingly dangerous ones. So he's getting a lot of this stuff right, but that means I'm not sure I want to continue on.
3/5. Young welsh policewoman works on a case involving the murder of a prostitute and her daughter. Which is not really the point of this book; the point is the protagonist's profound mental illness. It's an unsubtle, upsetting kind of psychosis with profound trauma at its root. Trauma so profound the protagonist doesn't even know it's there for most of the book, even though it dictates almost everything she does. It's well done, so much so that I found it overwhelmingly stressful and dislocating to read. She makes incredibly bad, unprofessional decisions because of her illness, and also terrifyingly dangerous ones. So he's getting a lot of this stuff right, but that means I'm not sure I want to continue on.
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I see parallels in these books to other police stories, especially Luther and Marcella on TV, where the detective character is unstable and also relentless, and where the key to the detective's success is in having a boss who knows exactly how much leeway to give them.
I like Fiona's story the best of those three because, unlike Luther and Marcella, Fiona never becomes adrift from community. Her family gives her ballast: not enough to keep her from making those unprofessional decisions, but enough for her to reel herself back to earth when she needs to.