When The Dead Cry Out [Paperback]

Hilary Bonner (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur (2005)
• ASIN: B000OTDH4S
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A British Procedural that Hits Close to Home, July 5, 2009

By 

R. Schultz (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When the Dead Cry Out (Mass Market Paperback)

This book seems to be cut right out of recent headlines. There have been a number of actual highly publicized cases in the last decade in which husbands have been suspected of murdering their wives and/or children. However, it's been difficult or impossible to prosecute any of these individuals because the bodies of their presumed victims can't be found. The husbands can continue to stoutly maintain that their wives must have taken the children and "run-off" with someone else.

This fiction of such circumstances starts with the discovery of a remarkably well-preserved body. The Torquay area police immediately set to work trying to confirm that this corpus delecti was once the wife of an arrogant lady's man whom almost everyone has long believed eliminated his whole family decades before in one cold-blooded spate of homicide. This book becomes, not so much a "who-dun-it," as a "how-can-we-prove-he-dun-it."

There aren't any particularly clever forensics here, or any brilliant Sherlock Holmes deductions. It's more a depiction of what has to be pursued as a routine investigation, with all the messy misunderstandings and conflicts between investigators that that entails.

Some of the best chapters in this book are the ones containing flashbacks to the lead investigator's childhood. Back then, her family's life was coincidentally intertwined with the current suspect's life. Paradoxically, his family was still intact then, although he was pursuing outside interests. Meanwhile, the investigator's family was disintegrating. Hilary Bonner does a good job depicting a penumbra of family dysfunction. Parents and child are becoming unavailable to each other. They were dissolving in distance and vague dissatisfaction in ways that many readers will probably be able to relate to.

This isn't a book of stunning revelations - but it will keep you interested.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars intriguing British police procedural, June 29, 2005

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When the Dead Cry Out (Hardcover)

In 1975, Clara Marshall and her two young daughters, Lorraine and Janine, vanished without a trace. The Devon and Cornwall Constabulary like all the locals suspect the husband and father Richard of killing his family. Clara's father Sean MacDonald especially believes his son-in-law murdered his daughter and grandchildren. He insists that she dumped him for another man. After failing to find any evidence of foul play the missing person's investigation was finally filed cold case.

Almost three decades later, divers exploring a sunken Nazi E-boat find parts of a skeleton wrapped in tarp and chains inside. Detective Superintendent Karen Meadows believes they have found part of the remains Clara, but what happened to the children. The missing person's case is reopened as a murder investigation with Karen, who lived next door to the Marshalls when the three females disappeared, leading the inquiries. As he has been for twenty-eight years ago, Richard remains the prime suspect

WHEN THE DEAD CRY OUT is an intriguing British police procedural that is excellent when the story line concentrates on the investigation; the plot bogs down a bit when Karen's personal woes is the focus. The case is cleverly designed so that the audience will detest Richard, who readers will want proven as the killer when he seems unfazed by the skeletal recovery of a family member. Karen is much more volatile than the seemingly serene prime suspect. Hilary Bonner writes a solid who-done-it starring a fine protagonist who uses humorous self deprecation to handle life's setbacks.

Harriet Klausner