Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham

[lightreads]

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.

Comments

[readerjane]

For what it's worth, I think Fiona really comes into her own by the end of book five. She stops worrying so much about being a "real girl", with all its Pinocchio overtones, and starts to claim who she is.

They are harrowing books. In several places I wasn't sure whether I could keep reading. I'm glad I have, though.

I also really really like the relationship between Fiona and her dad. It could have become two-dimensional at several points, but it hasn't.