My Review of Know No Evil by Graeme Hampton

Thanks go to Tracy Fenton for inviting me to review this book.

My Review:

I thoroughly enjoyed the plot, Graeme Hampton has created a real world scenario of a hunt for a murderer in a less salubrious part of London, Stoke Newington. The narrative begins in the past and moves to the present, they seem unconnected but the reader knows that they must be somehow and Hampton cleverly keeps you guessing as to why. The solving of the crime had me gripped. I love crime procedurals and relished Hampton's focus on solving the crime and all the mundane and monotonous work that this entails for the police. It's no spoiler to say that it is a difficult case for all involved and that both hard work and that good old gut instinct are essential even in the modern computerised world.

The main protagonist are DI Denning, new to MIT and without the confidence of his team, and DS Molly Fisher, keen to move into MIT from CID. Both have personal lives that could be relevant to the case but then again perhaps not, we're never sure what is a red herring until the riveting climax. 

I have to say that I did not warm to either Denning or Fisher and at first this worried me. However, and this is a big HOWEVER: it doesn't matter ... They might be flawed human beings but they are outstanding police officers and that matters more. Both Denning and Fisher put their job before their private lives because they are made that way.

In terms of secondary characters I must give a shout out to Betty Taggart aka DCI McKenna, a formidable and well developed character. The fact that she comes from Motherwell just like me hasn't influenced me at all ;)

I would recommend this book to lovers of gritty crime fiction.