Phoenix (New Blood) [Hardcover]

John Connor (Author)

Book Description

Series: New Blood | Publication Date: December 15, 2003

The 8th April 1996 was a bad day for Karen Sharpe, the eighth anniversary of something so deeply buried she had hoped to forget it ever happened. But each year it was there again, pushing to get out. And each year she tried to cope in whatever way she could. Most years she turned to booze. But this year that wasn't going to work. Sometime after midnight Phil Leech, her DS and partner on Operation Anvil, is executed in a military style killing, whilst Fiona Mitchell, his pretty 21 year old informant, ends up face up on a South Pennine moor with bullets through her face and chest. Karen had been due to meet both when drink and memories intervened, preventing her from getting there. The police operation to find Leech's killer - Phoenix - is one of the largest in the history of West Yorkshire. Detective Chief Superintendent John Munro is the Senior Investigating Officer. He thinks two middle tier drug dealers - Coates and Varley - are the most likely suspects. Fiona Mitchell was Coates' girlfriend and both men were the targets on Anvil. There is even a rumour of a deeper relationship between Leech and Mitchell. But Karen isn't sure.Odd details keep pulling her back, forcing her to look inside herself and examine her own unclear memories. As Munro's enquiry focuses its efforts on Coates and Varley, Karen follows her instincts to different and more disturbing clues, embedded in her own secret history. She must confront her past and act quickly if she is to prevent the seed of destruction planted eight years before from wreaking devastating and brutal consequences.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Connor introduces a tough Yorkshire female cop in his engrossing debut. After joining a fellow detective and the girlfriend of a known drug dealer for one too many drinks at a pub one evening, Det. Constable Karen Sharpe wakes up with a hangover the next morning to discover that she must identify the bodies of her companions, shot the previous night. Det. Chief Supt. John Munro, who heads the investigation, is convinced the case is tied to a botched drug deal. Sharpe, a wildcard who's used to following her own rules, pursues a different angle. She soon realizes that the murders may be linked to her own checkered past as an undercover operative. While U.S. readers may have difficulty at first keeping the various British and Irish political factions straight, Sharpe will remind many of a young Jane Tennison—stubborn, angrily vulnerable, and with some of the best instincts on the force. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

'John Connor's debut novel Phoenix starts as just about the most impresive police procedural that I've ever read - and one of the most authentic, presumably since Connor is a lawyer with the CPS ... His style and approach are quite unusual and I have high hopes that this series will turn out to be something a bit special.' -- Mat Coward MORNING STAR '... Connor makes excellent use of his procedural knowledge to heighten the tension and crank up the pace, building to a breathless climax.' SHERLOCK MAGAZINE 'a first-rate thriller with a terrific climax.' -- Susanna Yager SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Grisham did it in America, now a British criminal lawyer debuts with a suspense-packed thriller.' PETERBOROUGH EVENING TELEGRAPH 'The kind of thriller that would make for a great TV series.' IRISH EXAMINER

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Orion Publishing (December 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0752857746
• ISBN-13: 978-0752857749
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,641,946 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Introducing Karen Sharpe, May 26, 2004

By 

Untouchable (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Phoenix (New Blood) (Hardcover)

If this were just a simple murder investigation, solved through the police procedural method of grinding out the facts until the killer was unearthed, then I would have listed it among the countless books of the genre where it would be lost and forgotten by next week. What makes PHOENIX stand out from the crowd as a memorable thriller is the introduction of Detective Constable Karen Sharpe. In his debut novel, Jon Connor has produced a strong mystery with an even stronger protagonist.

Karen Sharpe is a tough talking, hard-drinking woman. She breaks the mold as far as most of the female protagonists that I've come across go. She strikes me as a cross between Ian Rankin's Detective Inspector John Rebus and Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch. The similarity comes from her total disregard for the wishes of her superior officers which is matched by her near pathological desire to work alone.

Our introduction to Karen comes as she is suffering from a hangover after drinking herself into oblivion the night before in an effort to cope with an unspecified anniversary. From early on we understand that there is a lot more to Karen Sharpe than first meets the eye.

Detective Sergeant Phil Leech of the West Yorkshire Police Department's drug squad is found shot in the head in his car in a remote field on a South Pennine moor. Leech is Karen Sharpe's superior officer and was working as her partner at the time. She can vaguely remember a late night phone call urging her to an important meeting that had to do with a case they were working on, but she was too drunk to leave her house. Leech went in her stead. Consequently, she is beset by guilt with the thought that the person with the bullet holes in their head could very well have been her.

A major taskforce is set up, code named Phoenix, and is headed by Detective Chief Inspector John Munroe. He appears to be a very compassionate man who takes it upon himself to help Karen through the shock of having to identify her partner at the murder scene, not that she appears to need to be mollycoddled. He then decides to include Karen on the taskforce due to her knowledge of the case that she and Leech were working on before he was killed.

The investigation conducted by the West Yorkshire Police is probably the most procedural police procedural I have ever read. What I mean by this is that the actual breakdown of tasks are described in great detail at the start of the operation, more so than in most other police procedural mysteries that I have read. Plenty of detail is given in the areas of gathering evidence at the crime scene, viewing CCTV footage, following terrorist connections to eliminate the possibility that it was a Provisional IRA hit. We really knew that every avenue was being explored by the police.

Karen Sharpe breaks away to conduct her own investigation, blithely ignoring the tasks given to her by her Sergeant. There is a constant aura of mystery about Karen's past, glimpsed occasionally through the strange direction that she takes the case. She seems to know about suspects and facts that help her move her investigation forward, yet she doesn't really know how she knows about them. There is a definite sense that something big is going to be revealed about her before this case is solved, effectively luring me to the ending with the promise of a surprise.

The interaction between DCI John Munroe and Karen Sharpe is particularly interesting as their relationship develops beyond the professional. Although he holds a position of power over her due to his rank, it is Karen who rules their relationship, not only mentally but physically too (which comes as a major shock to Munroe, let me tell you).

The only problem I had with the book was the size of the team used to investigate the murder. The team of over 50 officers seemed unfeasibly large to me, compared to the size of the small town in which the murder was committed. It was difficult to believe that there were so few other crimes being committed that this kind of manpower could be committed to a single investigation. Admittedly, it was a fellow police officer who was murdered, but still it seemed a little unrealistic.

Jon Connor weaves an intriguing mystery that branches out into a much more complex plot than I first expected. Giving the story a solid edge, he has created a strong protagonist and has revealed enough about her past to make her a fascinating character, but I get the impression that he has held back more about her that will be revealed in future books.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars raw and unflinching, November 17, 2009

By 

Srdjan Pesic (Minneapolis, Mn United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Phoenix (New Blood) (Hardcover)

John Connor's remarkable debut novel leaves a lasting impression with its courageous look at the world we live in. The protagonists of this story are deeply flawed, but nevertheless real characters. They barely manage to stay afloat in their day to day life, even if to others they convey self-assurance and strenght.
Mr. Connor's writing is incredibly strong and precise for a debut novelist. His portrayal of the world and the police work is raw and unflinching, stripped of glamour and simplicity of most of the crime novels. I eagerly await his next book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Phoenix, September 21, 2008

By 

Gloria Feit (Long Beach, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Phoenix: A Detective Karen Sharpe Mystery (Paperback)

Tantalizingly, this novel opens with a brief scene which takes place in Shepherd's Bush, London, in March of 1988, to which no further reference is made until much later in the book, after the reader has been left to ruminate and try to place it in the context of the balance of the book, which takes place in West Yorkshire, eight years later. DC Karen Sharpe is called to the scene of a murder, where she is asked to identify the victim: Her partner, Phil Leech, 37 years old, who has been shot to death, the same man who she was to accompany the previous night but was too drunk to do it. Now it would appear that the person they were to meet, a long-time informant, or someone connected to or following that person, had murdered him, and would have perhaps murdered her as well.

The Senior Investigating Officer on the case, DCS John Munro, is sympathetic to Karen's understandable feelings of guilt, which are only magnified when the 22-year-old informant is also found murdered, a short distance from the spot where Leech was killed. But Karen appears unemotional, and insists she needs no time off and is ready and able to assist in the investigation [dubbed "Operation Phoenix"]. Munro tells the officers: "There has never been an undetected murder of a serving officer in the entire history of the West Yorkshire Police Force. This one will be no different. You will see to it."

Karen Sharpe, thirty-five years old, six feet tall, is an intriguing protagonist, wonderfully drawn. One has heard of the detective who is "flawed" [not to be too cliché about it], filled with guilt, complex, and with little respect for authority - Karen is all of the above. The author says: "There would be something hard at the center of Karen Sharpe, something she kept only for herself . . . Most of the time she felt like an iceberg. Not just frozen. But moving around in the midst of more trivial objects." And she is indeed something of an enigma, thought of by her co-workers as a maverick. The story is compellingly written, the characters three-dimensional. The novel is one of the latest from this publisher, whose mission is to bring to the US the works of authors well-known in the UK, and for good reason. The book is highly recommended.