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2000s: Frank Elder’s last case could be the one that breaks him for good.
2000s: Frank Elder’s last case could be the one that breaks him for good.
The heavy manacles around the girl’s wrists, perhaps not surprisingly, looked very much like the ones that had been found on the studio floor. For a moment, she had a vision of the chain to which they were attached being swung through the air, taking on force and speed before striking home. Then swung again.
When his estranged daughter Katherine appears on his doorstep, ex-Detective Frank Elder knows that something is wrong.
Katherine has long been troubled, and Elder has always felt powerless to help her. But now Katherine has begun to self-destruct; the breakdown of her affair with a controversial artist, known for his pornographic paintings, has sent her into a tailspin.
But when the artist is found murdered in his studio, suspicion falls on Katherine. The vultures are circling.
And as Elder struggles to protect his daughter and prove her innocence, the terrors of the past threaten them both once more…
It’s more than four years ago that Elder has lived in Cornwall. It’s a pretty place on the headland close to Zennor and St Ives. He enjoys the serenity and the calmness of this retreat of his. Walking along the Penwith Peninsula and around the area brings him some sort of peace after his life in Nottingham and his work with the police.
Cornwall:
“At the headland he stopped and turned, looking back. Above the village, the road on which she would come curved steeply between the high moor and the fields beneath, a scrimmage of rock and stone, rough bushes of heather and gorse. The lights of cars, soft, as in a mist.”
He rents a farm labourer’s cottage which has stone wall think enough to withstand the wind. He has an oil-fired stove for cooking and heading. 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.
Destination: Nottingham, Cornwall Author/guide: John Harvey Departure Time: 2000s
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