Customer Reviews

Nothing Like the Night

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

At first glance, David Lawrence's "Nothing Like the Night" resembles many other thrillers in which female victims are horribly mutilated and murdered by a psychopathic predator. The central character is DS Stella Mooney, a tough female detective based in London. During the day, Stella performs her job with fearless aggression. However, she is plagued by frequent and unsettling nightmares, and she has been drinking too much in an effort to turn off her disturbing thoughts. Even though she has had a live-in lover for six years, Stella is strongly attracted to a principled and compassionate journalist named John Delaney. Helping Stella to sort out her conflicting emotions is Anne Beaumont, Stella's insightful therapist, who also serves as a criminal profiler for the police.

Mooney is called to the scene when a former fashion model named Janis Parker is found dead, her throat slashed and her body covered with cuts. Stella and her team follow up all available leads, but they come up empty. When more victims turn up, it becomes apparent that a serial killer is loose in London. The police are anxious to find out how the killer chooses his victims, and since there are no signs of forced entry, why the victims let him into their flats. As time goes by with little progress being made, Mooney and her team become increasingly frustrated by their inability to solve the crimes.

"Nothing Like the Night" stands out because of David Lawrence's hard-hitting, gritty, and uncompromising writing style. The dialogue is sharp and realistic, and the author takes the time to capture the nuances of each character's personality. In the course of the novel, Lawrence thoroughly explores the underbelly of London society. Figuring in the plot are drug dealers and addicts, women who sell their bodies on the street or in strip clubs, a street urchin who lives in a cemetery, and dangerous thugs who kill at the drop of a hat. The description of police work is first-rate and the suspense builds to a nerve-racking and surprising conclusion. "Nothing Like the Night" is a frightening and grisly novel, with graphic descriptions of sadism and violence, but it is also riveting, compelling, and unforgettable.

While at the library the other day, looking at the new books, I saw a new book by David Lawrence. The book, Cold Kill, caught my eye, especially since it said "A Stella Mooney Novel." I put that one down and went in search of Lawrence's earlier novels. The second book, Nothing Like the Night, was the one that I took from the library (the first one wasn't available).

A young, successful, beautiful woman is found dead in her apartment (or, since the action occurs in London, I should say 'flat.'), stabbed over 50 times. There isn't much forensic evidence, so the police believe it to be over drugs, a former lover, or a robbery gone bad. It isn't until a second woman is found, murdered in the same manner that the police, and Stella Mooney, think that something else is happening.

Let me say, first off, that I am not familiar with a lot of British customs/phrases, so some of the reading was difficult to comprehend. Specifically, the references to "DS Mooney," "AMIP" (Area Major Investigation Pool), "DC Harriman," and the like. I suppose that I needed some reference to compare these to the US police departments. But, those are very small complaints.

This is a wonderful book. The main character, Stella Mooney, has issues. She is prone to nightmares, she is in two relationships, she's seeing a psychologist. She isn't "superwoman," but she is a great detective. As the pressure mounts to find the killer(s), Stella has pressure mounting in her personal life. Also, the reader is introduced to the seedier side of London. It would be fair to say that the writing is gritty and realistic.

A highly recommended book. I am looking forward to reading the other books in this series.

The second in the relatively new Stella Mooney series continues dark and gloomy, giving us wide swathes of the dank, gritty underground of London where the gangs, prostitutes and drug-pushers hold sway. Now, someone is torturing and killing beautiful women. Although the scenes are full of evidence, it is of no use because there is no one to whom it can be linked. As the death tolls mount, and Stella's personal life grows ever more dark, this thriller races to a pulse-pounding beat.

This book is definitely right up my alley - the descriptions are vivid and almost poetic without being overboard, bringing the reader into the scene. Definitely worth the read - I look forward to the next in the series.

Lawrence's second Stella Mooney procedural is even better than his exceptional debut, "The Dead Sit Around in a Ring," Mooney, a tortured soul who doesn't want to give up the devotion of her longterm love, George, or the excitement of her passion for journalist John Delaney, approaches her work with an appealing tough relentlessness.

Another serial killer story with graphic depictions of torture murders and gruesome forensics, the novel's quality rests on the noirish complexity of the characters, intriguing subplots (the homeless boy living with dogs in a mausoleum, for instance) and the depth of the setting as much as the suspense of the chase.

Though the first victim is a glamorous former fashion model, there is nothing pretty about Lawrence's London. The glittery models keep slim on cocaine; the dealers inhabit a world where brutality is strength and death is a teaching tool; sex is either a commodity, a sickness or both. Stella's heartfelt passion and integrity are balanced by guilt and secrets, some worse than others.

Point of view centers on Stella but shifts frequently, from the omniscient witness of a brutal drama in the slums to the specific terror of a marked man, a murder victim, a betrayed lover, a sadistic killer. Gritty and dark, Lawrence's series should appeal to fans of Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly and Val McDermid.

- Portsmouth Herald

This is not really my kind of English mystery - I am more of the "cozy" type. But for what it is, it is pretty good. It's rather rough reading and I did get tired of the main character angst about her two lovers but the mystery itself was interesting. I started to put it down a couple of times but kept going back until the end just to see how it ended. Definitely not a cozy but if you like rather rough police procedurals, you will enjoy this. It's a London you will NOT want to visit.

Dark mystery for dark times. British noir shows its superiority through marvelous works od Stuart McBride, Martyn Waites, Jim Kelly, Val McDermid, Denise Mina and countless others.
Of course, the tradition of crime writing of the British is much longer than anywhere else. Even so, the only other remotely comparable mysteries come from the Scandinavian countries.
David Lawrence, well regarded poet, wrote , so far, four mysteries. After first two, I must say that he belongs to the upper echalons of this tricky craft. His beautiful language paired with vivid characters makes his books something that should not be missed. And i will not.

Stella's in a juicy case now! Someone enjoys partially incapacitating a victim and stabbing her multiple times while a video camera documents the perversion. The coup de grace is a wide slash to the throat.

Our heroine, Ms. Stella Mooney, still struggles with Smirnoff and whether or not she should take a chance in love or settle with stable security. She makes her choice in this novel, and she's human enough to feel a sadness and wrenching pain for the understudy.

Again, as in The Dead Sit Round in a Ring, Lawrence paints a bleak and razor-edged landscape of pillage, carnage, and debauchery in the seedier sections of London. Certainly, this is one of the highlights of Lawrence's books--his ability to transcribe such a sordid picture of a society debased by the seven deadlies.

His writing is strong, and his characters are all flawed. We therefore feel the tension in relationships and the desperate futility of the AMIP team members as they track down the truly twisted. One of my pet peeves in this genre of writing--the serial killer novel--is my feeling that space must be devoted in each story of this kind to a plausible explanation for the SK's psychopathology and modus operandi. The author acceptably delivers these facts in appropriate places in the story so we can get a clearer picture of the criminal in tandem with Stella et al.

This is a strong entry in the British police procedural genre, and I'm thrilled to know Stella's still out there battling her ghosts and chasing London thugs in a third novel, soon to be available.

Suffering from nightmares of dead babies, Detective Sergeant Stella Mooney gets the call late at night waking up her live in lover George Paterson. Stella quickly heads to West Kensington to look over the crime scene of a murdered woman. In Notting Hill Gate, Stella learns that someone murdered Janis Parker apparently over a week ago; the body was found when the downstairs neighbor felt bodily excretions leaking on him from his ceiling. Stella notices the overwhelming odor before seeing the cut up corpse that means a frenzied crime of passion or a killer toying with their victim.

Janis' roommate Stephanie James is missing so Stella wonders if she is dead too. At Imago Magazine where Janis worked, Stella learns that Stephanie's boyfriend Mark Ross took a too a drunk Janis home from a party last week making him the prime suspect. However, when they find Mark dead with cuts and abrasions all over his body, Stella and her team know they are confronted with a deadly killer who seems to take immense pleasure with playing with his mice.

This interesting British police procedural will grip the audience due to its terrific protagonist struggling with a nasty case and even nastier dreams from previous cases. The investigation is methodically conducted so that the audience follows the police as they sift for clues. Stella's personal life adds depth into her personality including inner turmoil and disturbances that would bring down a less person yet impacts her official inquiries. Sub-genre fans will appreciate this exceptional tale and want to read the eerie THE DEAD SIT AROUND IN A RING, David Lawrence's previous work.

Harriet Klausner

I did not order this book nor have I received it and I hope I wasn't charged for it.
Pauline Picerno