Customer Reviews

Chemistry of Death

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dr David Hunter seeks refuge in general practice in a remote Norfolk village after a family tragedy. When the police seek his expertise in forensic anthropology to find the killer of a young woman, he is anxious not become involved. When a second woman goes missing, the small community is deeply unsettled and suspicious. As events unfold, and it becomes fairly clear that the murderer is a member of the community, accusations follow.

I read this novel in two sittings, and a number of the characters are going to occupy my consciousness for a while. This novel is full of page turning twists and turns. It is also full of detail which, while it may be too much for some, adds to the complexity of solving the case and increases the tension in the tale. I also enjoyed `Written in Bone' and will be looking for more from this author.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Move over, Patricia Cornwell, Simon Beckett's on your turf. The Chemistry of Death is a page turner of a new, forensic/police procedural novel, with lots of psychology, chemistry, medicine, and red herrings. The stage for this creepy serial killer story is set as a young woman on her morning run through the woods and marshes senses that someone or something is watching her, and the suspenseful atmosphere is sustained throughout. Just about any of the male residents who patronize the local pub could be the sick murderer, not excluding Dr. Hunter, the forensic anthropologist upon whom this new series centers. Manham, whose population is being terrorized, is a remote, somewhat inbred village in the Norfolk downs, where there is no shortage of interest in blood "sports".
Chemistry is no cozy English mystery. Forensic detail of the type contained in this book is not for readers with easily-turned stomachs. But neither is it not one of the repulsive tales, so popular now, with plots that focus primarily upon sadistic, endless, gruesome torture scenes (ala Chelsea Cain, for instance.) Simon Beckett is a promising newcomer to the genre.

As an avid and long-time mystery reader, I like to be fooled. More often than not, I correctly figure out the perp by the halfway mark. In "Chemistry of Death," I changed my mind about "who done it" three times in the course of reading this excellent yarn. Highly recommended for those who like twisty mysteries and can handle a fair amount of gruesome details.

Simon Beckett has led an interesting and varied life. After gaining an MA in English he spent a number of years as a property repairer, before having a stint teaching in Spain. He has played percussion in a number of bands and since 1992 has been a freelance journalist writing for some of the top British newspapers.

I found this book quite enthralling, it really does grip you. It is both frightening and yet compulsive reading. You do not want to know what happens next and yet, on the other hand you can't wait to find out. It is certainly a cut above the average thriller.

David Hunter, a forensic expert has left his old way of life behind him. A tragedy forced him to re-think his life and he now working as a GP in a small out of the way Norfolk village. He is content and believes he has left all his former heartaches behind him.

Then a body is found, the victim, or what is left of her is called Sally Palmer. She has been savagely mutilated and the police need Hunter to help find the killer, but he is unwilling to return to his former profession and desperately wishes to remain uninvolved. Then a second woman disappears and the quiet, close-knit community that has been Hunter's bolt hole becomes a place full of frightened people. Neither the villagers or David Hunter can hide any longer . . .

This first book in a new series gets the whole thing off in an excellent style! There is, in a very small English village, a series of abductions and grisly murders, which appears to be the work of one of the residents. A doctor who has resided in the village for only three years is considered an "outsider" still, and the fact that he seems to be going around with the police makes him a suspicious person in the eyes of his neighbors.

The plot moves along very quickly, and the search for the kiler becomes quite urgent when the female friend of the doctor becomes the latest abductee. He is frantic, and does all that he can to find her. From that point the plot really explodes and the tension mounts.

It's not revealing anything to tell that the final revelation is quite a shock to the reader. I really don't think that anyone could see it coming, and it brings the book to a conclusion. I enjoyed this work very much and intend to read the future installments in this exciting series.

I have been a avid reader of Kathy Reichs, and until her last couple of books, Patricia Cornwell. I discovered Simon Beckett quite by accident through a multi-path search looking at the 'Customers who Bought This Also Bought...' and read the reviews. Okay, my thoughts were, new author for me - I'll take a chance. Let's just say, I'm hooked. With the backdrop of Great Britain, (can't get enough of it) the male forensic perspective is, as much as I respect Kathy Reichs, Patricia Cornwell and their respective female forensic protagonists, refreshing.

I enjoyed the Chemistry of Death so much that I bought Written in Bone. I'm about half way through that and I'm totally transported to the remote Hebrides of Scotland. His characters (even the dead ones) and the scenes he portrays literally come alive. Knowing this is an author whose books will take a place of prominence on my bookshelf, I also just bought Whispers of the Dead.

It's easy to become completely absorbed in his books and I don't want to put them down at night even though I know at some point I have to turn the light off and go to sleep. I tell myself, 'just one more page' until it's the wee hours of the morning by the time I force myself to put it down.

Looking forward to the next one!

Doctor David Hunter works as a GP in a small village -Manham- in Norfolk. But in a "previous life" he worked as a forensic anthropologist specialized in dacaying bodies until his wife and child died in a car accident. When women start to disappear and get brutally murdered in Manham he starts to help the police. It becomes increasingly apparent that the murderer has to come from the village and slowly suspicion enters the community: a beaten up homosexual, a civil vigilance movement and a preacher who pretends to be the village conscience do not improve the atmosphere in the village. Luckily, David meets the teacher Jenny and they fall in love with each other. But then fate intervenes...

A very interesting book considering the theme (what happens to a village population when there is an unidentiefied killer in their midst), which is by the way very similar to "The church of the dead girls" by Dobyns. The only minus is that the descritions of the bodies and the accompanying signs of decay are sometimes a bit too vivid to my taste: not a book to read on an empty stomach.

Seeking to escape sad memories of his life in London, Dr David Hunter joins a small practice in Manham, a village in Norfolk. The owner of the practice, Dr Henry Maitland, is the survivor of a car accident in which his wife was killed. Confined to a wheelchair, Maitland hopes that Hunter will relieve him of a considerable portion of the burden and stress of running a small one-man rural general medical practice.

Three years later, just as life for both men seems to be settling into a comfortable routine, the corpse of a woman identified as Sally Palmer, a local writer, is found by two young children playing in the woods.

Having discovered that David had considerable experience as a forensic anthropologist from his prior work in London, the local constabulary ask for his help in the investigation of the case. When a second woman is abducted, the village, in the age old fashion of a parochial close-knit small town community, look at David as a newcomer and place him high on the list of possible suspects.

It would be wrong to categorize THE CHEMISTRY OF DEATH as a serial killer suspense thriller but it certainly isn't a small town British cozy mystery either. Author Simon Beckett cashes in on his real life anthropological experience working with Bill Bass of Tennessee's world famous Body Farm and writes a solid forensic procedural with plenty of interesting scientific details on such minutiae as the rate of decay of human bodies under a variety of conditions and the use of insect populations as part of a model to determine reasonably accurate estimates of the time of death. In short, THE CHEMISTRY OF DEATH is an entirely realistic police investigation with plenty of scientific material to chew on that is very nicely balanced with the bloody bits and the actual action. The whole story ends suitably and quite satisfactorily with an unforeseen twist worthy of any of the more typical thrillers out in the market today.

Given Beckett's relationship to anthropologist Bill Bass, it will come as no surprise to discover that the scientific components of THE CHEMISTRY OF DEATH bear a very strong resemblance to those in Jefferson Bass's BODY FARM novels.

Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

Simon Beckett's 'The Chemistry of Death' is a good effort, considering it's the author's first novel, but it has more than a few tiny flaws that eventually add up to keep the book from achieving a higher rating.

The forensics sequences, with their detailed descriptions of decaying corpses, and attention to procedural detail, are, not surprisingly, a high point of the story. They are unsettling, but I didn't feel they were revolting. The story itself is not exactly as fresh or groundbreaking as the forensic science discussed here. We have Dr. David Hunter, the usual lone Englishman who's trying to put a personal tragedy behind him, moving to a typical remote village that isn't quite as peaceful as it seems, populated by character types who are, if not cliched, then certainly a bit too familiar; Henry, the 'old country doctor', with some well-kept secrets of his own; MacKenzie, the crusty, hard-boiled policeman; the obligatory handful of 'village types', whether nice (Ben and Janice) or 'a bit dodgy'(the Brenner brothers); the usual 'shady reverend'(probably the one truly cliched character in the story), put in to provide the customary 'skeptical outlook toward religion' that seemingly must be included in all British police dramas, relevance to the plot notwithstanding; the protagonist's late wife and kid(conveniently part of the story in spite of their 'deadness'); the two principal victims, whom we get to know and like just in time for them to die; and, finally, the obligatory 'new girlfriend who allows the hero to finally mourn and then get on with things'.

The story is seemingly handicapped slightly by what's called the 'economy of characters'; a small cast limiting plausible suspects. Beckett overcomes this, to a point, with some nice misdirection and red herrings in certain characters' motives and actions(though one important character is glossed over so much at first, that I nearly forgot who the chracter was when that person's importance to the story is revealed!) Also, a crucial explanation of the actual killer's motive late in the story depends a bit too heavily on the action being set in a small town, where such an explanation could never have been allowed to happen in a larger setting. So, the book requires maybe a little more suspension of disbelief than normal, but this will only be a problem for some readers.

Beckett takes a while to 'find himself', and the first third of the book is a bit slow, except when the actual victims appear. The leisurely pace of the small town, and the length of time it takes the action to really take off, may be drawbacks for some readers. The author's narrative 'voice', when not describing forensic matters, is rather unoriginal (a first-person narration), and his use of the narrative technique suffers from heavy-handed foreshadowing, as other reviewers have already mentioned. Had the author only known not to write so many sentences like this, the rating might have been higher!
I found David's situation, and the 'odd village' setting, to be highly reminiscent of some James Herbert works, notably 'The Magic Cottage', and the two 'David Ash' novels...hmmm, there's that first name again!

There's one passage in this book that seems to nod to Herbert's 'The Dark', in which random unexplained violence is mentioned as the villagers turn on each other...but, perhaps thankfully, Beckett doesn't pursue this angle, perhaps mindful that it's already been done!
The ending is suitably 'twisty', at least, maybe a bit too 'twisty' regarding the ultimate fate of a major character, with some 'after the fact' explanations that seem a bit too convenient.

At least, for anyone else who might not be keen on the setting of the book, we get an interesting hint of more exciting adventures to come in the preview for the second book in the series, 'Written in Bone'.

The 'chemistry' of Beckett's 'concoction' may not have as much of a bang as he hoped, but it certainly doesn't fizzle out, either!

David Hunter, who previously worked as a forensics anthropologist, abandons London and a devastating personal tragedy for rural Norfolk. He's left behind his former life and is seeking solace as a country doctor.

When the desecrated corpse of a woman is found, Hunter tries to stay uninvolved. But his past won't allow it. Reluctantly, he concedes to a police call for assistance. The disappearance of a second woman brings out the worst in the village residents. Hunter becomes first a suspect and then the only one who can stop the killing.

Beckett provides a fascinating mix of forensics and non-stop action, well-drawn characters and enough twists and turns to leave the reader breathless.

I read Simon Beckett's second novel in the Dr. David Hunter series before this one.
Sometimes reading series novels out of sync can present problems. One minor glitch here was I knew the outcome for a particular character before reaching the end of the book. That is not to say it spoiled the read for me. Good writers have the ability to make each book in a series a satisfying stand-alone. Beckett is a good writer. And I'll be looking for more of his work.