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2000s: Frank Elder has never forgotten his first case..
2000s: Frank Elder has never forgotten his first case..
Detective Inspector Frank Elder has never forgotten his first case with the Serious Crimes Unit. His first case and never solved; no one was ever charged; the murderer never found. At liberty to walk the streets, and to kill again.
Eight years later, Elder’s estranged wife contacts him in his Cornish hideaway. Her friend’s sister Claire – a quiet and withdrawn widow in her fifties – has mysteriously disappeared. Elder, reluctantly, agrees to dig around and see what he can find. Then Claire is found, dead, arranged with meticulous detail on her bed, and it doesn’t take long for Elder to make the connection. It’s obviously the work of the same unbalanced individual and, to find the killer, Elder must shine a light into the darkest recesses of human behaviour, the dark and twisted recesses of a disturbed human mind…
It’s more than four years ago that Elder has lived in Cornwall and at the start of the book we see that he’d once promised himself that he would learn the names of all the trees
“But high in the peninsula between Zennor and St Ives, on a a narrow strip of land between moor and sea, there were no trees, – or precious few – and the flowers that pushed through, hardily, each spring, remained for the most part anonymous.
Cornwall does seem nice:
“This morning, the sky was pale over the sea and smudged with freyland, darkening over the old tin mine at Sperris Croft”
He rents a farm labourer’s cottage which has stone walls thick enough to withstand the wind. He has an oil-fired stove for cooking and heating. It’s basic but calm and he loves it. He only had a telephone installed at the behest of friends and family. He prefers reading and solitary pursuits.
It’s all very different to life back in Cornwall. He heads back here to his old stomping ground to investigate a case he thought was in the past. The city is dark, gritty and a mix of memories and nightmares. Hotels, streets and neighbourhoods are backdrops to the story as well as the magnificent history and castle in the real city.
Destination: Nottingham, Cornwall Author/guide: John Harvey Departure Time: 2000s
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