Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths by Harry Bingham

The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths by Harry Bingham (Orion, 2014) is the third book about DC Griffiths, a Cambridge graduate on the Cardiff, Wales, police force. Fiona has a psychological breakdown in her past. Because of the condition that caused the breakdown, she is obsessive about her job and she finds it hard to fit in socially, resulting in awkward interaction with her peers and superiors. I am impressed with her direct supervisor, who overlooks her gauche and sometimes stubborn behavior to focus on her noticeable skills in police work. Not every supervisor would do that.

Soon after she successfully completes a class in how to create and maintain a new persona in undercover work, she has the opportunity to put what she learned into practice. A very organized group of criminals is perpetrating payroll fraud, as it turns out, in several companies and is killing anyone who gets in the way. The embezzlement totals millions of pounds but because there are so many companies involved, the individual amounts missing are not immediately apparent.  

Fiona becomes Fiona Grey, a woman fleeing from an abusive domestic situation, who finds sanctuary and new friends in a homeless shelter. She first finds work as an office cleaner, and then the shelter manages to place her in a payroll clerk position, where she is enlisted by one of the gang’s leaders to help further their crime. What follows is a frightening walk on a high wire as Fiona tries to gather enough information to arrest the mob while staying alive.

The author’s notes at the end of the book indicate he talked to experienced undercover officers as part of his research, and this part is chillingly realistic, as is the splintering of Fiona’s personality. Near the end of her assumed role she is thinking of herself as two people and refers to herself as “we”. When the fictional Fiona Grey must disappear for her own safety, and the real Fiona takes on another undercover character’s persona, she really begins to have trouble separating the factual from the imaginary.

My quibble with this story is that I doubt someone with her known psychological problems would be allowed to go undercover, something that tries the most stable of people and results in exactly the psychological trauma that we see toward the end. Pushing that objection aside, this is a nail-biting wonderful read. 

·         Hardcover

·         Publisher: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ), 2014

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 140914092X

·         ISBN-13: 978-1409140924

Aubrey Hamilton © 2018
 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal IT projects by day and reads mysteries at night.