A-- B-- C-- D-- E-- F-- G-- H-- I-- J-- K-- L-- M-- N-- O-- P-- Q-- R-- S-- T-- U-- V-- W-- X-- Y-- Z

Battison, Brian

Truths Not Told

London, Allison & Busby. 279 pp. £5.99.

The police procedural has always exercised the imagination of crime writers and has been popular with the public. There is usually one outstanding policeman, but not a solo player. A team must be managed, usually several mysteries to be solved.

Brian Battison is one of the best purveyors of the police procedural. The book opens with Detective Chief Inspector Ashworth investigating a murder at the house of a well-known antiques dealer. Everyone is convinced they know the identity of the murdered man. Sergeant Holly Bedford is infiltrating the twilight world of gangsters and drug dealers. She is borrowed by a neighboring Special unit and her loyalties to Jim Ashworth are sorely stretched, especially since she is man-crazy and the head of the Special unit (determined to do Jim Ashworth down) is sexually irresistible. Detective Josh Abraham has problems with his lover, who has AIDS. A tiny plastic skeleton keeps turning up to intrigue the reader even further.

The investigations appear unconnected, but in the end, they meld together, as card after card is placed face up while Ashworth, like a good chief, getting the best out of his team, while overlooking their foibles, trumps all.

The Telegraph aptly described Brian Battison as the John Creasey of the nineties.

Bell, Pauline

Blood Ties

London, Macmillan. 265 pp. £16.99.

1942. The siren's wail grows from a murmur to a deafening crescendo. But Dorothy Greenhow cannot file into the gloomy air raid shelter to play dominoes and gossip and drink rum, cocoa, or meths. She has to respond to two night calls. Two women are in labor. A prostitute gives birth to a healthy son. A rich woman, desperate for a child, gives birth to yet another stillborn child. Dorothy is filled with a sudden fury. Why shouldn't she play God? She couldn't make a worse mess of His world than He seemed to be doing himself. She swaps the rich woman's baby with the prostitute's son.

Half a century later four female students are murdered. They were killed on different days. But their bodies were assembled around a coffee table. The murderer had photographed this macabre coffee party. Three of the murdered girls were students. The main suspect disappears.

The sleuth is DS Benny Mitchell and though not everybody would like to have him for a neighbor, his wife tries to humanize him. She is the daughter of a Chief Inspector and wants to make sure he becomes one too. The author carefully lifts the roofs of the houses and shows us what goes on and it is frightening. Is adultery wrong but murder all right in this small Yorkshire town? Will Dorothy Greenhow's Biblical message be read and understood to help the police catch the serial murderer in a world that hardly knows the Bible? (Answer: Just about.)

Pauline Bell is based in Yorkshire. She confesses to reading other people's detective fiction in her spare time.

Billingham, Mark

Lazybones

London, Little Brown 2003. 368 pp. £ 12.99.

Remfry's were particularly nasty offences. Maybe someone wasn' convinced he'd paid for them.

With some cases it was easy to stay uninvolved, Hate the killer, love the victim. The cases weren't always all that clearcut. DI Thorne worked best when his anger flared him into action. Investigations into the murders of rapists didn't get him worked up. Like so many others, including policemen, he believed they deserved it. Even the fact that the ostensible vigilante orders a wreathe for his victims fails to inspire any curiosity.

And then he discovers that there is a victim worth fighting for. Now he is involved. Now he is deeply, deeply interested. First of all, where does the vigilante learn the whereabouts of the convicted killer after release? As DI Thorne's investigation proceeds, it becomes obvious that the police themselves had missed important information. Some brain-dead pen-pusher had missed a name. An eye on his crossword as the other eye had simply skipped past it.

Now DI Thorne feels guilty, and that fires him up, too. He would speak with real passion to the other officers. He wanted to catch this killer more than ever now, and he wanted to spread that descire around like a disease. He wanted to engineer that heady feeling of desperation and confidence that could sometimes make things happen all by itself. In the process he gets a little careless himself.

Apart from a good mystery and investigation, there are a number of extras in this book for those who don't just read for entertainment, but want to think through issues. There is the whole issue of rape (and its effect on the victim and all those nearest and dearest to her), are courts too lenient, juries not attentive enough? What about volunteer police: the case is cracked when one such gets to work. Are senior officers good enough? Is the pressure on their subordinates too much?

This is the third DI Thorne mystery. Follow this link to visit the author's website

Booth, Stephen

Black Dog

London, HarperCollins. 375 pp. £9.99.

A black and white border collie emerged from the darkness, coming eagerly to sniff his hand, gazing up hopefully into his eyes. He guessed that she knew her master had gone. Dogs always did seem to know these things. The bonds of trust and affection they forged with people were so powerful that they could only be broken by death.

Detective Constable Ben Cooper (a paragon of all the virtues, the detective everyone loves) had only just returned from a fortnight's summer leave. On his first day back he is swept into the search for Laura Vernon, fifteen years old, missing from home. Laura Vernon's battered body is found and a murder investigation gets under way. The next unpleasant surprise is that there is new Detective Constable (Diane Fry) appointed in his absence. Only one of them will get the much-coveted promotion to detective sergeant!

As the investigation gets under way it emerged that Laura Vernon was not the innocent teenager her parents had made her out to be. As a matter of fact, she is smart, sexy and knows many local secrets.

The man who found the body and had his daughter summon the police doesn't appear to want the investigation to succeed. Clearly his family has a grudge against the murdered girl's family. But her own family too doesn't seem to be unduly struck by grief and are holding back some kind of information. Her father is a very successful businessman, married to a glamorous wife and success in business seems what matters most to him, more than solving the murder.

The two rivals for promotion each have their own strengths as well as weaknesses. Each knows that they must work by the book. Each knows they must be team players. The new detective constable seems more comfortable with such a philosophy. Ben Cooper is prepared to follow it outwardly, but realises it may not solve a murder case.

Stephen Booth walks in the district in which this, his first novel, is set.