Customer Reviews

The Return (Severn House Large Print)

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This latest DCI Hennessey & DS Yellich murder mystery reads more like an episode from 'Prime Suspect' or some similar TV police drama -- within the first few chapters the grisly find of a long buried body is found with evidence pointing to the fact that a murder was carried out and then hidden away; and we're also introduced to one of the people who participated in the disposal of the body. So, with practically no suspense and surprises in store for the reader, why would "The Return" be a read worth recommending? Because Peter Turnbull does a wonderful job of applying a different kind of suspense -- the question of whether or not Hennessey and Yellich will be able to come up with enough evidence to secure an arrest, or if the murderer(s) of the unfortunate Norris Smith will get away with murder all over again? The question as to whether or not Hennessey and Yellich would succeed kept me glued to the pages until I finished the novel, and it was well worth the effort.

Going into a private wood one summer's day, a treasure hunter makes a grisly find: a long buried skeleton. The skeleton happens to be that of a law student, Norris Smith, who went missing almost three decades ago. Evidence from the wound to the skull, points to murder (even if the quietly buried body did not already suggest such a thing). But having established the victim's identity and that he was murdered, Hennessey and Yellich's investigation hits a brick wall. In the meantime, Margaret Smith, a lay magistrate (and a fellow student of Smith's), recovers a suppressed memory that suggests that she participated in the disposal of Smith's body. A law abiding soul, she's appalled at what she now remembers of that horrific day, and wastes no time in contacting her fellow coconspirators, urging that they all come forward as it is the right thing to do. (All info from the first chapter.) Will Margaret's confederates heed her call to come clean, or will they, deciding that they do not share Margaret's moral dilemma, and opt for a more drastic solution to their problem instead?

"The Return" was an incredibly suspenseful read. With each succeeding chapter, I really began to wonder if Hennessey and Yellich would be able to come up with the evidence to secure a conviction against Smith's murderer(s), or if justice, would again be perverted. Turnbull maintains this air of tension and suspense throughout, without ever flagging. He also does a wonderful job of developing the various characters -- esp the murderer's and the victim's -- involved in this tragedy. "The Return" is a truly engrossing read, and is wonderful example of how a good mystery writer can keep you interested even when practically everything is revealed in the first chapter, and there are no sudden twists or new revelations to the plot. A truly great read.

There are three things I look for in a good novel, and this book misses the mark on all three. First, the writing in this book is so bad that I found it hard to read. It is filled with run-on sentences and sentence fragments, flagrant grammatical errors ("milk for I" and "it was to he that ..."), and sloppy and/or nonparallel construction ("larger or as large as ..."). The editing is poor, with conversations hard to follow when ending quotation marks are frequently omitted, and sentences confusing when the wrong word is printed (one sentence actually talks about visiting the "crime scent"). Secondly, the characters are flat and unappealing. The characters all speak alike, and they lack depth and credibility. All this might be forgiven by a good plot and engaging action, but the plot is too slow to make the effort of slogging through the bad writing worthwhile.

This book could have been a lot better with some good editing, and it seems a shame that someone received a paycheck for editing this book when it is filled with error after error. As published, however, it is very badly written. There are so many good books out there that there is no need to read such a poorly written story.

Peter is pretty good at putting together the plots of his books, but if you read more than one of them (as I have), you find that he is rather lazy and includes the very same tidbits about his characters that appear in more than one book. It almost looks like he is copying and pasting from book N to book N+1. By about the 3rd book, it gets hard to take.