Five years after a young psychiatric patient is charged and confined for the murder of a teenage girl, the disappearance of another schoolgirl and further abductions lead Detective Inspector Jackson to believe that the real killer is still on the loose.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Adroit procedural detailing and deftly orchestrated glimpses into the heart of evil produce a perceptible sense of menace in Palmer's ( Testimony ) highly assured second mystery. East Midlands career copper "Jacko" Jackson is sure he's got his man in the brutal murder of a young girl; the suspect, a childlike psychiatric patient, was once institutionalized for a somewhat similar offense. The young man, deemed incompetent, is locked away rather than tried. Several years of English life pass quickly--miners strike in the mid-80s, Jacko has a son, the English soccer team hopes to qualify for the World Cup. Readers, however, are also privy to the intensifying satanic ramblings of an unnamed man. As several more girls vanish from the area, Jacko faces his fallibility. Palmer brings facets of English society into clear focus in this work, including angry coal miners and overworked beat cops with callous superiors eager for tidy arrests. The killer's ruminations resonate powerfully, never overplayed or rendered melodramatic, as he focuses on Jacko's partner, Sgt. Heather Hurst, and readers wait, tension building, for the inevitable, graphic confrontation.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This nicely complicated British procedural starts off with an unoriginal pretext but quickly segues into a satisfying plot twister. Based on overwhelming circumstantial evidence, Detective Inspector Jacko Jackson and cohorts arrest a simple-minded young man for the murder of a missing teenage girl. The courts find him mentally incompetent and lock him away until Jackson, five years later, connects his alleged crime to a recent murder. Palmer uses intricate description to delineate the psychotic mind of the unknown murderer but keeps his identity hidden until the last moment. A safe choice.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Good despite ludicrous premise,
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This review is from: Unfit to Plead (Hardcover)
Look, blending the supernatural with the logical is more often than not a path to complete incoherence. This book manages by not being explicit about what world is real, and showing us what the characters see, and as such is a nice technical mystery with plenty of misleading clues and a careful architecture of doubts to clue us in to who is guilty -- entirely independently of any analysis of his nutty New Age satanism. "Jacko" Jackson, despite the moronic name, is an engaging character and the observations about modern society and human nature between the lines are quite rewarding. This book is not literature, being one of those crazy ventures where everyone but the killer is somehow sexier than people are in real life, but it makes for a good brainy read where most mysteries do not even try.
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