Easy meat Book

Another fine effort by John Harvey, and of course, now I'm so invested in the life of Charlie Resnick and his fellow cops that I spend part of my time worrying over all their futures. At least in Charlie's case, he finally has a girlfriend, a teacher who was dealing with one of the criminals who populate this story.

Since this was written over 20 years ago, perhaps we can forgive the unfortunate title, given the theme that emerges in this complex plot, which I can't tell you about without divulging crucial details.

A particularly strong feature of this entry is Harvey's deep dive into a dysfunctional working class Nottingham family, the Snapes. Norma Snape, a pub cleaner, has been abandoned by the fathers of her children. Her oldest, Shane, has already been in and out of detention and is up to no good. Her youngest, Nicky, is rebellious, a petty thief, and then, something worse. Her daughter is entering her teen years with the wrong crowd and a father who shows up out of nowhere. And Resnick is, in his inimitable way, both a thorn in the family's side and a lifeline to Norma through the misdeeds and calamities of her clan.

After Nicky is arrested for a horrific home burglary gone wrong, a close-to-retirement cop named Bill Aston is assigned to investigate a tragedy that befalls Nicky in detention, and then, something even worse happens to quiet Bill, a lay preacher and a parochial plodder.

In the midst of all this, Charlie is trying his first tentative steps toward his new love interest; his female detective, Lynn Kellogg, is seeing a therapist after her close brush with death in a previous novel; and a new detective, Carl Vincent, who is both black and gay, joins the crew.

The novel concludes with one of the most terrifying, brutal scenes that any of Charlie's constables has to go through, and it brings about a major change in the detective's life.

But all of that is for you to find out, dear readers.