I’m afraid I got very fed up with Risk Of Harm and gave up.
A young woman is found murdered in a derelict factory in Birmingham. DCI Robin Lyons and her team investigate but have great difficulty in identifying her. And, for a long time, that’s the story, except for the usual tropes about The Press Being All Over This and so on. The rest is all about Robin’s Involved Personal Life and Personal Demons. In the first four, shortish chapters we get: a terrible recent trauma in which her daughter was nearly murdered and which may threaten her objectivity on this case; an immediate boss who is an old flame; a pantomimically useless and sexist Deputy Chief Constable who hates her and insists that she gets a “nice quick solve”; and a difficult relationship with a DI whose case she solved previously and whom she has now beaten to the post of DCI. I was already wondering how much more of this was going to be trowelled on, when – surprise, surprise – there’s her racist brother who has hated her since she was born and is making life very difficult with her family.
I’m afraid this was the point at which I began to crack. Good writers can give us detectives whose personal lives are interesting and believable but which don’t dominate the story with endless, overblown “issues.” (John Rebus, for example, or Manon Bradshaw, to name but two). This sort of heavy-handed stuff just annoys me, I’m afraid. It drowns out the plot with implausible conflicts and pressures everywhere and takes the place of real insight into the human problems which crime causes.
It’s possible that I’m being too harsh and that I have missed a classic piece of crime fiction in the later parts, but I doubt it. I do know that plenty of people will enjoy this and my irritation is a matter of personal taste. Nonetheless, I really couldn’t be doing with Risk Of Harm and personally I can’t recommend it.
(My thanks to 4th Estate for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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