Jo Bannister is a prolific Irish crime fiction writer. She
has released nearly three dozen books since 1984, creating six stand-alone
novels and six different sets of series characters. Her latest is Other Countries (Severn House,
2017), the fourth in the Gabriel Ash and Hazel Best series set in the
fictional small town of Norbold, outside Birmingham, England.
Hazel Best is a former teacher who joined the police force
after a few years in the classroom and is still considered a new recruit. She
has already established herself, however, as a lightning rod for trouble. At
the beginning of this book she is returning to work from medical leave, needed
because of injuries incurred only weeks after she started work as a constable.
The new police supervisor thinks sending her to guard a celebrity who is in
town to open a museum is a safe job that will ease her back into full-time duty
but of course it is not. A young man from Turkey has tracked down
the celebrity with the intent of killing him. Hazel steps into the path of the
improvised bomb and awakes in the hospital.
In the meantime her friend Gabriel Ash, who is recovering
from a mental breakdown, is becoming accustomed to caring for his sons who have
recently come to live with him. The daily routines of getting them fed and off
to school each day are overwhelming, and he lives in fear of Social Services
taking them away. He is so deeply absorbed in all these new activities he
doesn’t realize that Hazel’s brief post-hospital holiday has gone on for nearly
two weeks. When he does, he and Hazel’s lodger find no one, including her
family, knows where she is and they begin to look for her.
This book is not what I expected when I pulled it off the
New Mysteries shelf at the library. I was halfway through when I realized I had
no idea where it was going. It is not a police procedural and there is no
murder. There are multiple crimes, however, within a story of friendship and
loyalty. It also shows in a frighteningly realistic scenario how an
intelligent, capable person can be slowly drawn into a life-threatening
situation.
It is not necessary to read the earlier books in the series
to understand this one. I picked up the basics from the bits of background
carefully woven into this absorbing tale, which I read in one sitting, staying
up late in order to finish. Highly recommended as a riveting, unusual piece of
crime fiction.
Aubrey Hamilton © 2018
Aubrey Hamilton is a former
librarian who works on Federal IT projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
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